In Valea Morilor
I want to tell you about Valea Morilor . . .
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Posts Tagged: Ukraine
Glimpses of Peace Only in Dreams: Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees
There’s a war on, and Sergey Sergeyich is worried about his bees.
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A Dreamscape of Longing: Two Big Differences by Ian Ross Singleton
Zina’s observations of her time in Detroit crystallize both a feeling of otherness and a wry critique of the young American activists who celebrated socialist ideas without fully appreciating the legacy of Soviet rule in Ukraine.
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Tracing the Wolf
To brand myself with something I feared and sought to subdue seemed like a reclamation.
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Flesh and Blood: A Conversation with Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko discusses her story collection, YOUR AD COULD GO HERE.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Journalists Invade Former Soviet Union”
The missionaries seemed concerned. I figured it was too late for that.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky discusses his new collection, DEAF REPUBLIC.
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Borders and Boundaries: Talking with Irina Reyn
Irina Reyn discusses her new novel, MOTHER COUNTRY.
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Lessons for Female Success
I am nowhere, but despite having erased his marks, he is everywhere.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
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The Peep King’s Legacy: A Family Portrait
The day after Hugh Hefner died, I received a text from my sister that our grandfather was starring alongside James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal in HBO’s new series, The Deuce.
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Chewing Rocks: A Conversation with David Biespiel
David Biespiel discusses his new book, The Education of a Young Poet, being comfortable in uncertainty, and extending moments in writing.
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TORCH: Goga
She was brave, coming to the station that day. It was still a time when people seen associating with the “traitors” could have had trouble from the KGB.
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Looking for Russia in America
Everyone around us is speaking Russian, and I feel like we are in Russia, the old one, before the wall came down. For a moment, I even feel like I belong.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Anne Raeff
Married authors Anne Raeff and Lori Ostlund, both winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, discuss their craft, their process, and the way they negotiate the give and take involved in sharing a vocation.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
If you want to work at The Strand, you first have to pass a literature test. But don’t worry, if you’re among the dozens of applicants that fail, you still can play Pokémon. Glad Day Bookshop, the oldest bookstore in Toronto, Canada and the longest-surviving LGBT bookstore in the world, needs some help. Hong Kong booksellers are […]
...moreCensorship in Ukraine
During anti-government protests in the Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, Oleh Shynkarenko, a journalist and blogger, found himself turning to Facebook after some of his blog posts were deleted, presumably by security forces. What he shared was a novel about about a man whose brain was controlled by the Russian government, published in 100-word snippets on the social […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Kim Brooks
Kim Brooks discusses her debut novel, The Houseguest, her approach to character and historical narrative, and the value of engaging readers with larger social issues through literature.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
An Estonian bookstore is removing Russian propaganda from its shelves after a request from Ukraine. Check out these amazing bookstores from around the world. The Observer shares some photos of The Ripped Bodice, the first all-romance bookstore in the US that opened in Los Angeles last month.
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The Rumpus Interview with Zarina Zabrisky
Zarina Zabrisky talks about her new book, Explosion, the art of the short story, Russia and Ukraine, and being “a Jewish pessimist in the spirit of Shalom Aleichem.”
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Hong Kong is dominated by two kinds of bookstores—the independent shops specializing in political books and pornography banned by China and the shops secretly owned by Beijing’s communist government. A Tokyo-based bookstore hosting a book fair centered around democracy and freedom suspended the event after criticism. Customers nostalgic for Borders bookstores need only to head […]
...moreUkrainian Literature, At Last
Ukrainian literature—or Ukrainian culture more broadly—employs the words “last” quite often: last territory, last bastion, the last issue of a magazine, the last books of a bankrupt publisher, the last Ukrainian-speaking readers, writers, translators. At Electric Literature, Natalka Sniadanko discusses Ukraine’s obsession with “last.”
...moreA Colony Divided
In Koktebel, on the southern coast of Crimea, artists have gathered for almost a century, attracted to the “particular light and kinetic landscapes.” Now, with the annexation of Crimea, Neil Macfarquhar of the New York Times reports that the summer writer’s colony is divided, and the otherwise communal atmosphere has given way to two competing […]
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