Ruta Sepetys

Born and raised in Michigan, Ruta Sepetys is the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. The nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia disappeared from maps in 1941 and did not reappear until 1990. As this is a story seldom told, Ruta wanted to give a voice to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives during Stalin’s cleansing of the Baltic region. Ruta lives with her husband in Tennessee.

Her first novel, Between Shades of Gray, about the Genocide of Baltic people after the Soviet occupation in 1941, was critically acclaimed and translated into over 22 different languages. At Sepetys’ request, musician Gavin Mikhail composed a piano soundtrack to accompany the book.

Her second book, Out of the Easy” is a New York Times bestseller and was chosen as an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times on February 15, 2013. A story of identity and family, Out of the Easy was born from Sepetys’s interest in post-war America, feminism in historical context, and the idea that young people can be the authors of their own destiny.