Anastasiia Shtompel

Anastasia Shtompel was born in Ukraine. From early childhood, she had a vivid imagination, which she expressed in her stories and drawings. She loved to read fairy tales about adventures, heroes, good and evil, but she never thought that she herself would become the heroine of a fairy tale.

In 2022, war shattered Anastasia’s peaceful life in Ukraine. After a year of volunteering in besieged Kyiv, helping rehabilitate affected soldiers, children, and women, she made the difficult decision to leave everything behind. Abandoning home, family, and friends, Anastasia embarked on an uncertain new chapter in Great Britain. Through a Ukrainian refugee program, she arrived in Swansea and was taken in by her sponsor, Keith. With no job, home, or direction, Anastasia found solace in translating her Ukrainian fairy tale Bidma: A Fairy Who Thought She Was a Witch into English. It was after Anastasia saw a novel about a young girl written by a well-known English author in the library that she was encouraged to try submitting her fairy tale to Austin Macauley Publishers.

And as in a good fairy tale, Anastasia received a letter with the answer that they want to publish her story.