YANA VAGNER was born in Moscow in 1973 into a bilingual family. Her Czech mother had come to Moscow in the 1960s to study Russian language and literature. Yana graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in management and has worked as an interpreter, a radio anchor, and a logistics manager, a career that allowed her to travel extensively throughout Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

She began writing To the Lake as a weekly blog while a flu epidemic swept through Moscow. It later became a bestselling novel, translated into multiple languages and adapted into a Netflix series, followed by its sequel, Truly Human, and the stand-alone novels Accomplices and The Tunnel. Both Accomplices and The Tunnel are currently in development for film adaptations.