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. War veteran Yefim Shulman was beloved by his children, wife and 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 Nina and her children to reassess the husband, father and grandfather they thought they knew and the bonds they'd formed with him and each other. Following one family over the course of 70 years and three generations, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light into the shadowy corners of a marriage marred by secrecy and the sacrifices people make to survive.