E512 - Sara Winokur - Iceland, Chess, DNA, Science and Historical Mystery Fiction

Episode 512 - Sara Winokur - Iceland, Chess, DNA, Science and Historical Mystery Fiction

Sara Winokur is a geneticist, researcher, and author. Her historical fiction and cultural thrillers embody elements of DNA and forensic science, as she has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics. Her research helped identify mutations underlying muscular dystrophy, and Huntington’s disease.

In her Nordic noir novel “Double Blind: The Icelandic Manuscript Murders,” a young boy disappears from a fjord in Iceland. Years later, his twin sister Brynja, a DNA scientist, searches for him but lands in a world of trouble. Her second novel, the historical thriller “Ivory Bones: The Lewis Chessmen Murders,” finds Brynja racing against time to find the valuable medieval chess pieces before she herself becomes the target. Sara is a direct descendent of two of the main historical characters: the ruthless Barbary pirate Jans Janszoon and his son Anthony, the largest landowner in 1600s Brooklyn and Coney Island.

As an ovarian cancer thriver, Sara has a sense of gratitude, strength, and perspective that she extends to family, friends, work, and her writing. On her journey from science to writing, she says “Let go of who you are and become what you might be. Do what scares you.” 

A mother of three, Sara Winokur resides with her husband and writes in Southern California. That is, when she is not traveling the world in search of unique stories.

https://www.sarawinokur.com/