Katya Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine and Washington Post among other publications and teaches journalism at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is the author of From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union (Potomac, 2019); Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back (Potomac, 2018); and Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life (Nebraska, 2012). Cengel has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, International Women’s Media Foundation and International Center for Journalists.
When we are young every decision seems weighted with extra meaning. A teenager can trace the exact steps that lead from the missing of a ski trip to the life…
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s stories are not about dissidents or defectors. They are about something far more dangerous to the Soviet ideal: ordinary people.