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Nina Willner (born 1961) is an American author best known for Forty Autumns, an internationally published Cold War narrative nonfiction family memoir, published in 2016 by HarperCollins William Morrow.

Early Life and Education
Willner was born in Kansas, and was raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan. Her mother, Hanna Willner, a teacher and writer, escaped from East Germany during the Cold War. Her father, Eddie Willner, was a German Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor and later, a U.S. Army major. Willner has five siblings. She graduated from James Madison University in Virginia and attended Moscow State University in Russia.

Career
Willner is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in Berlin during the Cold War. Following a career in intelligence, she worked in the fields of human rights, rule of law, education, and for women’s and children’s charities. She has spent almost three decades living abroad and working in a variety of positions in the U.S. Government, non-profit and humanitarian outreach programs in Moscow, Prague, Minsk, Ottawa, Berlin and Istanbul.

Personal Life
Willner is married and has three children. She lives in Istanbul, Turkey and Washington, D.C.

Willner is also a runner, an artist, and speaks Russian, German and French.

Work
Willner’s book, Forty Autumns, chronicles her family’s journey through forty years of forced separation during the Cold War. Willer researched and wrote the book while living abroad in Central and Eastern Europe and in Canada.

Reception
Forty Autumns has been praised by Library Journal. Willner’s story has been featured on CNN iReport.