Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
11 Jul 2011 at 10:19
Julija Šukys
Autobiography, Balkans, Biography, Byzantium, Canada, CanLit, Christianity, CNF Conversations, Creative Nonfiction, Eastern Europe, Feminism, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Matt Cohen, Memoir, Myrna Kostash, Orthodoxy, Publishing, Rejection, Research, Saints, Slavs, Translation, Ukraine, Uncategorized, Writing
Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2010. * Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Myrna Kostash is a fulltime writer, author of All of Baba’s Children (1978); Long Way From Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (1980); No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls [...]
11 Jul 2011 at 10:18
Julija Šukys
Autobiography, Balkans, Biography, Byzantium, Canada, CanLit, Christianity, CNF Conversations, Creative Nonfiction, Eastern Europe, Feminism, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Matt Cohen, Memoir, Myrna Kostash, Orthodoxy, Publishing, Saints, Slavs, Ukraine, Uncategorized, Writing
Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2010. * This is Part II of a two-part interview with Myrna Kostash about her book, Prodigal Daughter. Click here to read Part I. Julija Šukys: You are a writer who is very rooted in Western Canada and in the Ukrainian [...]
19 May 2010 at 11:36
Julija Šukys
Canada, Children, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Exile, Gardening, Journeys, Language and Multilingualism, Letters, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages
A couple months ago I took my son to visit my Aunt Birutė to talk about family history and my grandmother’s exile. She gave me some extraordinary photographs during that visit, including several from Siberia. More than I expected. One small photograph, dated 1957, shows my grandmother’s house. Made of logs and with a straw [...]
31 Mar 2010 at 08:59
Julija Šukys
Alternate Economies, Anthropology, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Friendship, Gardening, Journeys, Margaret Paxson, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages, Writing
I’ve been reading my friend Margaret Paxson’s book, Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village. Paxson, an anthropologist, watched, interviewed and listened to the villagers of Solovyovo for many months to learn how they related to each other, to their land and to the past. Yesterday, shortly before going to a dinner party [...]
17 Mar 2010 at 08:22
Julija Šukys
Adoption, Archives, Autobiography, Biography, Children, Eastern Europe, Feminism, Letters, Life-writing, Lithuania, Lituanus, Mothering, Ona Šimaitė, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Slavs, Villages, Vilna Ghetto, Writing
True story: A researcher at the archives at Kent State University stumbles on the transcript of an interview with her grandmother. This is what happened to me in 2001, when I made the trip from Chicago to Kent, Ohio to look at two boxes of uncatalogued Šimaitė papers. Inside one of the cartons was a [...]
