Marina writes stories where the impossible feels ancient rather than imagined, where lanterns remember what the world forgets.

Born in Ukraine and shaped by northern winters and coastlines that never quite stop whispering, she grew up believing that light, like truth, is something you have to protect. She’s always been pulled toward the edge of a map — the wild places, the forgotten paths, the sense that if you traveled far enough, you’d find the story that was looking for you. That instinct fuels her debut novel, True Nord — a fierce Nordic romance and survival tale, and the first in The Lantern Dwellers’ Tales. It’s a story about a girl gambled away, of seas that keep their dead, and of hope that refuses to drown.

Marina’s worlds are threaded with the same contradictions that shape her own — beauty and brutality, frost and flame, myth and memory. She holds a Creative Writing degree from UCLA and has built narrative experiences across TikTok, Netflix, and Meta, where she learned how small words can move entire worlds.

She now writes from a window overlooking the mist-laced hills of the Poconos, where every season feels like the beginning of a story and a candle is always burning beside her. She believes every lantern carries a story, and every story, a spark of the light we almost lost.