Etya Vasserman Krichmar was born in 1954 in Kazakhstan, the republic of the former Soviet Union. In 1977, her husband, two-year-old daughter, and she claimed religious discrimination. On Thanksgiving day, inside the American Embassy in Moscow, they received exit visas and left USSR. After a three months stopover in Rome, Italy, they landed at International JFK airport on March 7, 1978, to start a life free of fear. Now a mother to two children and grandmother of three, Etya is retired and lives in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, with her husband and two miniature dachshunds. The local TC Palm newspaper, The Turning Points Anthology, White Rose, The Write Launch magazines, Unleash Creatives and MasticadoresUSA published her work.