Marina Dyachenko

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-25

Maryna (Marina) Dyachenko is a Ukrainian author and former actress, born January 23, 1968, in Kyiv, then part of the Ukrainian SSR. She graduated from the Theatre Institute of Kyiv in 1989 and worked professionally as a theatre and cinema actress before turning to fiction writing. From the late 1980s she began co-authoring novels with her husband, screenwriter and former psychiatrist Serhiy Dyachenko, and the pair became one of the most celebrated writing duos in post-Soviet fantasy and science fiction, describing their shared style as 'M-realism,' a blend of psychological realism and speculative premise. Their collaborative works, written primarily in Russian, include The Scar (1997), Vita Nostra (2007) — a philosophically dense novel about a young woman coerced into a mysterious, transformative school — and Daughter from the Dark, published in English translation in 2020. The couple received recognition as among the best science fiction writers in Europe at Eurocon 2005 and won numerous other literary honors across their career. Maryna Dyachenko relocated with her husband to California in 2013, where she has continued writing following his death in 2022, remaining a significant figure introducing Ukrainian and Russian-language speculative fiction to English-language readers through translation.

Universe(s)

Books

• Vita Nostra (2007) · Vita Nostra Core Canon
• Assassin of Reality (2021) · Vita Nostra Core Canon
• School of Shards (2024) · Vita Nostra Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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