Join us in the bookstore for an evening with Sasha Vasilyuk. 

Thursday, September 4th at 630pm

Spanning between World War II and the Russia-Ukraine conflict and based on real events, Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury) is a riveting debut novel about a Ukrainian Jewish WWII veteran with a lifelong secret, the repercussions for his family, and the grace they find in the course of their survival. Your Presence Is Mandatory won the California Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of a debut novel, Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury), winner of the California Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. It has been translated into seven languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, CNN, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Telegraph, KQED, and elsewhere. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 13. She has a BA from UC Berkeley and an MA in Journalism from New York University.