The article examines the short story by Eugene Vodolazkin Zhdanovskaya Embankment between Literature and Life. The research is focused on the Petersburg text of Russian literature in 21st century. Vodolazkin’s short story contains the main features of the Petersburg text, such as a synthesis of nature and culture, a binary structure of space, its division into decorations and backstage, and semiotic polyglotism. However, Zhdanovskaya Embankment represents a new turn in the evolution of the Petersburg text. For instance, it doesn’t support an opposition between Petersburg and Moscow. On the contrary, it refers to The House on the Embankment, the Moscow novel by Yuri Trifonov. The toponymy of the short story and the system of personages elucidate an issue of the memory. The latter is constructed by means of collage, metaphors and allusions and is tightly bound to the space in the text. Ultimately, Petersburg in Zhdanovskaya Embankment, and broader in the anthology In Piter, You Live (2017) is performed as a creative place which attracts a certain type of personalities that correspond its cultural milieu.