Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY, about a Ukrainian Jewish WWII soldier and his family who reckon with his lifelong secrecy.

Sasha has written a lot about Eastern Europe, art, culture, travel and business. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, NBC, Harper’s Bazaar, BBC Radio, USA Today, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, The Telegraph, Los Angeles Times and Narrative. She has won several writing awards, including the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing and the NATJA award.

Besides writing, she has founded a leading wedding PR company, the first coworking space in San Francisco, and the first U.S. magazine for Russian-speaking emigre teens. She also spent a year traveling alone around the world.

Sasha is a graduate of Lowell High School, UC Berkeley (BA in Comparative Literature and Italian Studies), and New York University (MA in Journalism). She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

Books by Sasha Vasilyuk

Your Presence Is Mandatory

by Sasha Vasilyuk - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman --- husband, grandfather and war veteran --- was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended. In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined --- and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family. YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY traces the effect that Yefim's cover-up had on the lives of Nina, their two children and their grandchildren.