Anna-Mariia Kostiuk

Anna-Mariia Kostiuk comes from Kyiv in Ukraine. Her bachelor’s degree covers social pedagogy and practical psychology; she finished her diploma studies as a social pedagogue. Since 2024 she has been living with her husband Vitalii and their three daughters in Leonberg, Baden-Württemberg. She wrote her first story at nine — and has not stopped since.

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 — is in almost every one of her books.

Her stories begin in Ukrainian or Russian — the book itself is then written in German. Not out of duty: she loves and respects the country her family lives in today, and wants to leave behind something that stays in that language.

Leonberg, the town she chose as home, becomes the literary setting. A universe of its own grows out of the books: Vitalii illustrates and animates, and there is music, film — and a nameless shop in which every book has its own object.