Kingston University nursing student brings literary dreams to life after leaving Ukraine

Nursing student Karina Andrusiak has gone from fleeing her home country due to war to becoming a published author and nursing student in just four years. 

Karina, 38, who now lives in Sutton, is from Ukraine and had to make the difficult decision to leave her home country with her two children when Russia invaded in February 2022. 

She was a professional photographer with a studio back in Ukraine, as well as a keen writer, and was in talks with Ukrainian publishing companies before having to leave the country. 

Deciding to study nursing 

Karina’s journey took her through Germany before settling in the UK where she began working as a healthcare assistant at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London. 

It was while doing this job that Karina decided she wanted to help people through her work which eventually led her to decide to study adult nursing at Kingston University. “I really like I wanted to do something that is really significant and help people by becoming a nurse,” she said. “It feels surreal to be on the course and I never thought I would do something like this but working with the staff and students at Kingston has been wonderful.”

As well as raising a family Karina has also overcome the challenge of studying in her second language.

A passion for writing 

Karina has always had a love of reading, and this led on to her wanting to become a writer herself.

While still living in Ukraine Karina decided to write a book over the course of a couple weeks. She then sent it out to publishers to get some feedback and a small Ukrainian publisher agreed to take on her book. Unfortunately, the war started shortly after and the book was never published in Ukraine. Entitled Heavenly Fire, the fantasy novel was written under Karina’s pen name Lorna Fray. 

Karina explained how her time living in Germany continued the development of her book. “I was living in Germany for two months with my children and really trying to shield them from what was going on back home. I used this time to translate my book into English and what really spurred me on was my publishers back in Ukraine sending me the cover of what the book would’ve looked like.”

Since moving to the UK Karina has become a member of the Society of Authors and the British Fantasy Society. She also serves on the Sutton Writers committee, and two of her short stories appear in the group’s 40th-anniversary anthology.

She has also worked with a self-publishing company which has now released Heavenly Fire and its follow up Morning Star, a psychological thriller. Karina has also written a book entitled Phoenix – a deeply personal novel about the war in Ukraine.

Karina now plans to continue writing new books while balancing raising her family in Sutton and studying nursing at Kingston. 

• Find out more about studying adult nursing at Kingston University
• Find out more about Karina’s books