a Kind of Refugee is a story unfolding in real time while Ukraine resists russia's unprovoked military invasion. Writing from Kyiv (my home since 2005) or wherever else I be, I report on "ordinary" life in a country and a world at war.
Launched in March 2022 from Lviv, after I fled the russian advance on Ukraine's capital on February 24, a Kind of Refugee has traveled from the western Ukrainian refugee and humanitarian aid hub to Mykolaiv, along the southern front, to the US via Poland, and back home to Kyiv. My personal letters to folks abroad, which reflect on Ukraine's citizen–military defense, cultures of cooperation, as well as intergenerational trauma, also track shifting attitudes toward the war as time passes.
Today Ukraine's survival as an intact and independent political nation is at stake as much as ever, even if it makes headlines less often. Ukraine's culture—with its long, complicated Soviet history; with its fruitful tension between doing things your own way and collective action; with its distinct sensibility in film, literature, theater, and art—has been my lifelong fascination. Sometimes I share other Ukrainian voices, particularly those closer to the front, in translation. Each letter closes with suggestions for how you can help Ukrainians maintain a robust defense.
A collection of my dispatches from the first year after russia's full-scale invasion will be published as a book by ibidem Press (in the Ukrainian Voices series, distributed by Columbia University Press) in spring 2024.
Selected published writing/translations:
"Letters from Lviv" by Larissa Babij in The Evergreen Review (2022)
"Three Poems" by Victoria Amelina (trans. L. Babij) in the London Ukrainian Review (2023)
"Horror Is No Different From a Dream" by Larysa Venediktova (trans. L. Babij) in Krytyka (2023)
"Ukrainian Theorem" by Mykhailo Ziatin (trans. L. Babij) in The Evergreen Review (2022)
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