Maryna Ajaja was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. In her twenties, she moved to the Northwest, raised two children, and commercially fished salmon. She has lived in Olympia, Port Townsend, La Conner, and Seattle, Washington. During the nineteen-nineties, she moved to Russia, lived in Moscow and studied film in St. Petersburg. Since 1997, she has programmed films from the Ex Bloc countries for the Seattle International Film Festival. IN DEEP (Wild Ocean Press, 2020) is informed by all the above landscapes and people.
