Sonya lives in the mountains of Colorado with her girlfriend Halcy and two energetic cattle dogs named Masha and Freki. Her experience as a queer Russian-Jewish refugee informs much of her work, from storytelling to activism. She has hiked all over remote northwest Montana looking for grizzly bears, spent many summer nights trapping endangered bats in the woodlands of Pennsylvania, worked on farms from Oregon to Norway, and taken the trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Mongolia. Her writing and photography have been featured in Elevation Outdoors, She Explores, Wylder Goods, Boulder Weekly, Outdoor Retailer Magazine, and Hidden Compass.

Sonya’s dream is to tie together her educational background in wildlife science with years of farm and restaurant work to create an ecologically sustainable permaculture farm where she can raise many babies, both human and animal. She enjoys carpentry, traveling, strong coffee, and identifying trees when no one asks.