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Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

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Award-winning historical fiction!
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger is a Ukrainian-American who transplanted to Austria.

Born in 1969, she grew up in the culture-rich neighborhood of "Nordeast" Minneapolis and started her writing career with short stories, travel narrativeMoreAward-winning historical fiction!
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger is a Ukrainian-American who transplanted to Austria.

Born in 1969, she grew up in the culture-rich neighborhood of "Nordeast" Minneapolis and started her writing career with short stories, travel narratives, and worked as a journalist and managing magazine editor, before jumping the desk and pursuing her own writing and traveling.

Her books tackle David-vs.-Goliath themes with strong women battling for the Underdogs against a system, be it political, geographical, or industrial. Sometimes all three. "I enjoy discovering the good, the bad, and the ugly in my characters when they come into conflict," she says. "And all of my stories have been inspired by injustices I've discovered along my travels."

The RESCHEN VALLEY series is based on the South Tyrolean-Italian conflict during the interwar period and was inspired by her travels to the Reschen Lake reservoir.

Her collection of short stories, which "reads like a novel", SOUVENIRS FROM KYIV won the silver medal in the IPPY Book Awards 2020 and features six stories inspired by true accounts from WW2 Ukraine. THE WOMAN AT THE GATES is what she identifies as her magnum opus and is based on her family in WW2 Ukraine.

THE GIRL FROM THE MOUNTAINS was inspired by an anecdote about a Nazi family from Austria.

The DIPLOMAT'S WIFE trilogy (released in 2023) follows Kitty Larsson, a U.S. senator's daughter who marries an Austrian diplomat before the Anschluss, only to discover that his family is not what she thought they were. Part spy-thriller, part political-thriller, the series promises a wild romp as Kitty navigates the events of WW2 with her moral compass in hand.

And in 2024, Chrystyna's first middle-grade historical fiction novel will be published by Scholastic USA. Set in 2014 Sevastopol, SWIMMING WITH SPIES is about 12-year-old Sofiya who is forced to wrestle with her Ukrainian identity as Russians swarm her peninsula and annex it. When they threaten to seize the dolphins in her father's care, she races against time to save them from a brutal fate. Less