Irina Merkina

Irina Merkina was born in Moscow and graduated from the journalism department at Moscow State University. An emigrant with extensive and varied experience, she left for Israel after perestroika, where she worked as a journalist, press secretary, translator, cashier, babysitter, and bun baker.

In the early 2000s, she returned to Russia, which was already a different country. She wrote six books published by Moscow publishers, several plays (some staged), and countless scripts for Russian and Ukrainian television series. She compiled, edited, and authored illustrated encyclopedias.

In 2014, she moved to Sweden. She participated in the creation of documentary and advertising projects in Swedish. Together with her husband, she ran the news website Varjagnews for Russian-speaking readers.

Since 2019, she has lived in Luxembourg. She works in editing, journalism, teaching, web development, and taming neural networks.

She is the mother and grandmother of numerous bilinguals. In addition to Russian, she speaks Hebrew, English, and Swedish, a lesser degree of French, and a little Luxembourgish. When she grows up, she wants to become a YouTuber and visit Mars.