Sergey Dyachenko

Marina Yuryevna Dyachenko-Shirshova and Sergei Sergeevich Dyachenko are Ukrainian writers and screenwriters who write in collaboration in Russian and Ukrainian in the genres of contemporary science fiction, fantasy, fairy tale, and others, while also successfully combining several genres in one work. Sergei Dyachenko is a former physician and psychiatrist (which contributes to a deep knowledge of human psychology) and Candidate of Biological Sciences (which speaks to an analytical mind)... Marina Dyachenko, also known as Marina Shirshova, is a former actress (which likely points to some innate romanticism and a tendency toward transformation)... Sergei graduated from VGIK, the screenwriting faculty, and is the author of scripts for a considerable number of popular-science and feature films, among which the best known are the six-part television epic Nikolai Vavilov and the feature film Hunger-33. Sergei is a laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine, has triumphed at prestigious film festivals, and has received prizes from Literaturnaya Gazeta and the magazine Ogonyok... Marina began her literary career before she learned to write, at the age of a little over four—she is the author of the one-off books A Fairy Tale about a Locomotive and The Tricks of a Thief. With a clear inclination toward constructing verbal chains, she nevertheless entered the Kyiv Theatre Institute, performed on stage, including even Desdemona, but never managed to learn public creativity. Shying away from the glare of the spotlights, she eventually found her refuge before the cozy screen of a computer... And so, reunited in marriage, the coauthors formed a graceful two-headed creature, but not by the principle of “The Swan, the Crayfish, and the Pike,” rather by the principle of a catamaran: just try to overturn it!... Marina Dyachenko: “I have always been interested in writing about how grass pushes through asphalt, how the impossible becomes possible and attainable. About how something bright happens despite the fact that everything and everyone is against it.” Sergei Dyachenko: “All our work is an exploration of love as the highest phenomenon of life, its meaning and its essence. And for me it is the knowledge of Marina’s soul, of that primordial magic that enchants me in her. It is extremely interesting. But it is only a path of endless approach, because I