Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
31 Jul 2012 at 09:54
Julija Šukys
Creative Nonfiction, Domesticity, Letters, Memory, Mothering, Multiple Sclerosis, Ona Šukienė, Personal Essays, Photographs, Research, Uncategorized, Writing
Today, I return to my manuscripts. I’ve got both an essay and a book that I abandoned unceremoniously some four months ago. I can’t wait to get back to them. But there were good reasons for my break from writing: there was our house in Gozo to pack up, our life to get back in [...]
28 Mar 2011 at 15:47
Julija Šukys
Autobiography, Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Exile, Lithuania, Memoir, Ona Šukienė, Personal Essays, Publishing, Research, Russia, Siberia, Stephen Elliott, Uncategorized, Villages, Writing
I’ve finally started writing my new book, Siberian Time, in earnest. It will tell the story of my grandmother’s 17-year exile to Siberia. Inevitably, too, it will tell stories about my family members: my father, his sisters, my cousins, my grandfather. Because my chosen forms are the personal essay and creative nonfiction, I almost always [...]
03 Dec 2010 at 11:01
Julija Šukys
Academia, Archives, Exile, Letters, Life-writing, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Writing
I’ve been working with letters as literary artifacts for just over a decade now. As a graduate student, my attraction to letters was instant. The very first time I sat down with stack of yellowing missives, I was hooked, and never looked back. I work with letters because I like the intimacy they afford. Piecing [...]
12 Nov 2010 at 15:50
Julija Šukys
Archives, Canada, Children, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Exile, Language and Multilingualism, Letters, Life-writing, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writer's block, Writing
Pictured above is one of my most cherished possessions. It’s a 1947 postcard sent from my grandmother in Siberia, addressed to her husband and children. It was sent to a town in Massachusetts where we had relatives, though at the time my grandfather and his kids (my father among them) were living in the UK. [...]
17 Aug 2010 at 12:22
Julija Šukys
Exile, Journeys, Lithuania, Ona Šukienė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Villages, Writing
I’m home. Two cousins and I spent fourteen days travelling from Lithuania to Siberia’s Tomsk region, in search of the neighbouring villages of Brovka and Bialystok where my grandmother lived in forced exile and worked on a collective farm for seventeen years (for a time she lived in one village, then in the other). We [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
10 Mar 2010 at 08:53
Julija Šukys
Algeria, Anne Carson, Anthropology, Archives, Assia Djebar, Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Exile, Journeys, Ona Šimaitė, Ona Šukienė, Paris, Research, Russia, Siberia, Virginia Woolf, Writer's block
A writer friend of mine asked me recently how I keep going when things aren’t going well, and what I do when I become blocked. The most useful thing I do when I feel empty is read. I turn to authors whose work I want to emulate: Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Assia Djebar, Joan Didion, [...]
