diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index b162f3f..7dd4086 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+## v2.6.1 / 2014 Apr 8
+
+> **CRITICAL FIX** for v2.6.0 released 9 days ago. Please upgrade ASAP!
+
+
+
 ## v2.6.0 / 2014 Mar 30
 
 > **Major release** with efficiency improvements, reliability improvements, and some new utils.
diff --git a/src/taoensso/nippy.clj b/src/taoensso/nippy.clj
index 0aa40ae..f63492d 100644
--- a/src/taoensso/nippy.clj
+++ b/src/taoensso/nippy.clj
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@
 (extend-type String ; Optimized common-case type
   Freezable
   (freeze-to-out* [x ^DataOutput out]
-    (let [ba (.getBytes x)]
+    (let [ba (.getBytes x "UTF-8")]
       (if (<= (alength ^bytes ba) Byte/MAX_VALUE)
         (do (write-id    out id-string-small)
             (write-bytes out ba :small))