How Amazing Could This Ukrainian SFF Anthology Get?

On September 4, 2023, we reached a landmark $10,000 goal for the Embroidered Worlds anthology Kickstarter. Thank you! Now we work to spread the word far and wide about this collection of Ukrainian authors, many of whom have never been translated into English before.

The more people we can reach during the Kickstarter campaign, the more incentives we can unlock to make this book even more special!

If we reach our $30,000 goal, we will hire three Ukrainian artists to create interior illustrations, and include those in all editions of the book.

At $50,000 we will make available a limited-edition, numbered hardcover, with art prints of the cover and illustrations that can be framed.

HOW AMAZING WOULD IT BE TO HAVE ILLUSTRATED, LIMITED-EDITION NUMBERED HARDCOVERS WITH ART PRINTS!?!

We raised $10,000 in 4 days. Can we double that in a week?

Embroidered Worlds is scheduled for publication in December 2023. Anyone wishing to join in supporting the book has until Sept. 30 to do so, at levels ranging from a $1 ebook order to a $1,000 benefactor gift.

In the Kickstarter video that launched our project, my segment follows the two Ukrainian editors. I wanted to share it here.

I invite you to follow the link below and order your copy of Embroidered Worlds, and please spread the word to other readers who might like to add it to their libraries. For $20 you can order a paperback edition and also get an e-book copy!

Between readers of imaginative fiction and supporters of Ukraine, the potential audience for this book is large and diverse. Please support and share as you can!

Thank you to everyone who has pledged and shared so far! (If you have ideas how to spread the word, reach out. I welcome your ideas!)

E

Find Embroidered Worlds on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/embroidered-worlds?ref=9cyosw 

Embroidered Worlds Meets First Kickstarter Goal in 24 Hours!

We reached our first Kickstarter goal of $5000 in less than 24 hours! That’s amazing!

Thank you thank you thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far! Щиро дякуємо! 

Someone asked me a question about the stretch goals, so I wanted to take a moment to explain.

The way Kickstarter is set up, if a project does not reach its funding goal, none of the rewards are processed and the money is not charged. So instead it encourages creators to establish a series of goals, starting small and building step by step toward the most ambitious version of the final product.

In planning the Embroidered Worlds Kickstarter campaign, we were able to set different goals along the way. We would love to achieve all of them, but we started modestly. That way, no matter what, once we were funded we would be able to publish the book of stories by Ukrainian writers published in English for the first time!  We have now achieved this!

This means we can turn our attention to the next goals, and share the project with more people. Hopefully we can broaden our audience of readers!

  • With our base funding of $5000, we will be able to produce and print the book, with, at a minimum, the stories funded by the grant, as well as translations into English for a story written in Ukrainian by Tatiana Adamenko and stories written in Hungarian by Károj D. Balla and Éva Berniczky.
  • At $7000 we can commit to adding a selection of diaspora stories including ones by R.B. Lemberg, Valya Dudycz Lupescu, and Natalka Roshak, and also pay all three editors for their work.
  • At $10,000 we will produce a completed collection, including stories by Elizabeth Bear, Anatoly Belilovsky, David Demchuk, Halyna Lipatova, Askold Melnyczuk, and Mikhailo Nazarenko, Stefan O. Rak, and A.D. Sui.
  • At $20,000 we will hire a Ukrainian artist to design custom bookplates for this campaign only that will show that your copy is an original Founder edition. These bookplates will be sent with all print copies (for some international shipments, in separate packaging).
  • At $25,000 we’ll provide all backers a swag pack of cool, exclusive digital rewards from Atthis Arts.
  • At $30,000 we will hire three Ukrainian artists for interior illustrations, and include those in the book, all editions.
  • At $50,000 we will make available a limited-edition, numbered hardcover, with art prints of the cover and illustrations that can be framed.

Each level allow us to enhance the reading experience for our backers. (How amazing would it be to be able to make a limited-edition, numbered hardcover edition! Art prints!)

Achieving these stretch goals also means that more books are being ordered and shared! In turn, that makes it possible for our publisher to continue producing more wonderful projects in the future. I’ll keep posting updates and information here, and if you’re a backer, you’ll be receiving updates from me and others on the Kickstarter page as we go through this campaign.

Thank you again for your support, generosity, and enthusiasm!

Neil Gaiman delivered a commencement speech that was published in a book, “Make Good Art.” I’ve quoted from it before, because Neil is wise and there are a lot of good gems in there. I’d like to leave you with this:

And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.

And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

Thank you again. We are able to make good art because of your support. Thank you.

Let’s keep making good art. Together!

Embroidered Worlds Is Now Live on Kickstarter!

As I was preparing to write this post to announce the launch of our Kickstarter campaign for Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora, I realized that it was almost exactly 12 years ago (September 2, 2011) that I ran my first Kickstarter campaign, along with artist Madeline Carol Matz, for our comic book, Sticks & Bones. Kickstarter was still a fairly new platform then; nonetheless, it brought together 90 backers who helped us bring that comic, with its beautifully hand-painted pages, to fruition. I love that story, and I am so grateful for the lessons my first Kickstarter taught me about collaboration and creative community.

So much has changed in those 12 years—in the world and in my life. This time, the goal of the kickstarter is to bring Ukrainian stories of the fantastic to a broader audience, in partnership with an indie publisher out of Detroit, Atthis Arts. The executive editor is author E.D.E. Bell, who works alongside managing editor Chris Bell, with the support of a team of friends and associates.

How did a small press in Detroit connect with two editors in Dnipro, Ukraine—Olha Brylova and Iryna Pasko—and one (that’s me) in Chicago? Thanks to some introductions by members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, writers who are living and fighting and writing though a war were able to connect with an indie publisher passionate about championing diverse and authentic voices.

You can hear from those two Ukrainian editors on the Kickstarter video (link below in the comments), and from me (I appear at the end!)  It is an honor to work alongside them and the publishers to bring you this anthology. I would have loved to discover such a collection of stories when I was young. Back in the 1980s, I could find little contemporary Ukrainian fiction, due to Soviet censorship and propaganda. I was hungry for those stories; that is part of what motivated me to start writing my own, and it is also a big reason why I am editing this anthology today.

In this terrible invasion that is part of its ongoing colonialism, Russia is trying to erase Ukraine, her people, her culture, her history, her language, her stories. Art and writing are very much an act of resistance. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird, and experimental genres of literature have long allowed writers to tell imaginative stories that also comment on injustice, provide an escape, celebrate authentic expression, challenge assumptions, defy stereotypes, and suggest possibilities other than the one we are living through today.

That is powerful. Stories are powerful, and that power grows when the stories are shared. Please help us to share these stories in any way you are able. There are different options on the Kickstarter campaign, and there are so many social media channels and community organizations that can help to spread the word. Reach out to me on this site if you have questions; I will do my best to answer them or find someone who can.

Thank you for your time and support. Slava Ukraini!