Vera Nazarian is arguably the only Armenian-Russian professional speculative fiction writer working in English today.

Her life story is an unusual journey. She left the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War as a refugee at the age of eight, with her parents and nothing but a couple of suitcases, and arrived in the United States in 1976, a month before her 10th birthday, by way of Lebanon, Greece, and Italy.

Settling in the United States, she graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in Hollywood, CA in 1984, and then attended Pomona College in Claremont, CA, where she double-majored in English and Psychology. She received her B.A. in 1988 and soon after went on to work for over a decade in the high tech industry.

Holding down a full-time tech job by day, she would come home to begin her evening job, that of a professional fantasy and science fiction writer and artist and musician. Sleep was for wimps!