Marina Sonkina, a writer, educator, journalist and a former CBC broadcaster.

She was born in Moscow (the USSR) and was a lecturer in Humanities at the Moscow State University. A former CBC producer and broadcaster, she now divides her time between teaching at Simon Fraser University Liberal Art Program plus 55, writing and tango dancing. When Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, she went to a refugee camp on the border with Ukraine as the first respondent and managed to send hundreds of destitute women and children to the countries of European Union that had opened their doors to the fugitives. Convinced that the stories of human plight and courage should be known, she recorded what she saw and heard in "Ukrainian Faces: The Diaries from the Border." The book will be published in 2013 by Guernica Editions. Her novel "Larissa" is coming out in 2014.