Alina Sarnatska was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1987. She is a writer, radio host, war veteran, combat medic, scholar, journalist, human rights activist, and former sex worker. She studied psychology at the National Aviation University, later earning a Master’s Degree from the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, and a doctorate in social work at the Faculty of Social and Psychological Education of the Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University. Her dissertation was titled Enhancing the Safety of Women in Groups Vulnerable to Gender-based Violence. All her work explores resilience, trauma, and social justice, with a particular focus on veterans, women affected by violence, and communities impacted by war. She has been a prominent spokesperson for the rights of sex workers, working extensively with various NGOs. In 2024, she held a VILNO fellowship for veterans in art and education and, in 2025, was a Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2022, she founded Teplonosiї, a charitable organization that provides aid to wounded soldiers in hospitals. She served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine from March 2022 to July 2024. She served as a senior combat medic until December 2023, later moving to the Office for Support of Changes of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Her recent cultural projects include the book, Those Who Joined Love and Courage: LGBTQ+ Veterans in the Russo-Ukrainian War (Kyiv, 2025); the radio programs [In]Justice (Kyiv FM, since 2024), Strict Reprimand, and Volunteers (Hromadske Radio, 2022–2024), as well as her role as resident playwright at the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv (since 2024). Her award-winning dramatic works include Military Mother, Menstruation, and The Tribe that Waits (about women waiting for husbands to come home from war, inspired by The Odyssey). Balance has won awards at Contemporary Play Week- 2024, July Honey-2024, the Drama.UA competition in 2025, the Atypowow Documentary Theater Festival in Wrocław, Poland in 2025, and was a finalist for the Aurora Drama Award 2025 in Poland. It was produced at the Theater of Playwrights in 2025, and the Les Kurbas Theater in Lviv in 2026.