Anna-Mariia Kostiuk comes from Kyiv, Ukraine. Her bachelor's degree covers social pedagogy and practical psychology; her specialist diploma is in social pedagogy. Since 2024 she has lived with her husband Vitalii and their three daughters in Leonberg, Baden-Württemberg. She wrote her first story at nine and never stopped.
She writes dark: psychological thrillers, dark parallel-world fantasy, novels about war and conscience. What she learned in psychology and social pedagogy — how families work, where care ends and responsibility begins — runs through nearly every one of her books.
Her stories begin in Ukrainian or Russian — the book itself is then written in German. Not out of obligation: she loves and respects the country her family lives in today, and wants to leave behind something that stays in this language.
Leonberg, her adopted home, becomes the literary backdrop. The books grow into a universe of their own: Vitalii illustrates and animates, and around them come music, film — and a nameless shop where every book has its object.
