Nina Willner

Nina Willner is an American nonfiction author, a former intelligence officer and human rights activist.

Her first book Forty Autumns A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall (HarperCollins William Morrow, 2016, ISBN 0062410318) is the true story of Willner's mother's escape from communist East Germany at age 20, the large family she left behind the Iron Curtain, and their four-decade journey to reunite.

During the Cold War, Willner, then a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence officer, was sent into the heart of Soviet-controlled East Berlin to lead secret spy missions.

Willner uses her personal story to tell the broader story of the Cold War and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Forty Autumns was named “Top 15 Nonfiction Books of 2016” by Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews praised it as a book that “celebrates the resilience of the human spirit.” The book has been sold in the US, UK, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Holland, Slovakia, Brazil and China.

Willner grew up mostly in Falls Church, VA. Her father Eddie Willner, a Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, emigrated to the U.S. after WWII and served a career in the U.S. Army.

Her mother, Johanna Willner, is a teacher.

Willner has five siblings.

She is Jewish.

Willner began her career in Berlin.

After a career in U.S. intelligence, she worked in the fields of human rights and rule of law, in education and for women’s and children’s charity causes.

She has spent three decades living and working for the U.S Government, for non-profits and humanitarian outreach programs in Russia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Canada and in Turkey.