In Gratitude: A List of Charities

(A version of this post also appears as a Kickstarter update.)

On Saturday, September 30, 2023, 1,072 backers pledged $23,567 to help bring Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora to life. Our Kickstarter backers included people from all over the world!

We are so grateful for all the ways that people showed their support over the past month: becoming backers, sharing posts, telling friends, engaging with our updates. Together we created a global community of readers for these thirty fantastic stories, and we are so excited for people to read them.

Many people asked us about other ways to help the people in Ukraine. Kickstarter requires all funds raised to facilitate the project, and with the funds raised here we’ll be producing a beautiful book and sharing stories of Ukrainian culture, art, and resilience around the world. Again, thank you.

Our team understands the broad range of ways the Ukrainian people still need help, and we are committed to do what we can.

So we asked our authors and translators about the charities they work with and trust, and I want to share that list with you now:

Dobrobrat:

Dobrobat is a volunteer construction battalion that assists the survivors in the de-occupied territories in the urgent restoration of housing and social infrastructure.

http://dobrobat.in.ua/

Come Back Alive:

Protect the Sky is a joint charitable project organized by the charity foundation Come Back Alive and the Ukrainian postal company Nova Post. The project is designed to help Air Defense reduce their reaction time from minutes to seconds.

http://dobrobat.in.ua/

Unite with Ukraine:

Funds raised are being used to supply an evolving range of needs to the brave men and women on the front line, including: individual first aid kits; bullet-proof vests and helmets; night-vision goggles; and communication equipment and fuel, among other things.

https://unitewithukraine.com/

Chytomo magazine:

CHYTOMO is the largest independent media covering publishing and contemporary literary and cultural processes in Ukraine.

https://chytomo.com/en/

UA Animals:

Since the beginning of the full scale war, UA Animals has actively been helping animals within war zones: evacuate, provide feed and medicines for shelters.

https://uanimals.org/en/

Razom:

In a very short time, Razom has built an inspiring network of partners, volunteers, and donors that fuel the community, and consistently activate people in the United States and Ukraine to help Ukraine unlock its potential. Their projects are designed to have tangible, immediate manifestations of impact and provide opportunities for scalable growth ensuring that impact lasts.

Razom – Together we are Ukraine (razomforukraine.org)

United24:

UNITED24 is designed for collaboration with charities, partners, donors, and public figures worldwide. Their goal is to establish an efficient work process that brings Ukraine’s victory closer.

https://u24.gov.ua/projects

If you are looking for places to lend support, these are just a few of the many organizations that exist to help

Thank you to all the people working tirelessly in Ukraine and in other parts of the world: healing the wounded, tending to the dying, comforting the grieving, providing shelter, food, education, and resources, caring for the land, working to bring an end to violence and injustice. There is so much work to be done all around this beautiful planet we call home.

I believe that together we can make a positive difference, and I hope that the ripples of support and love and community continue to expand outward.

I thank you wholeheartedly. Щиро вам дякую.

A Few More Days

There’s a new post up on Kickstarter announcing the full list of authors and featuring the book cover!!!

Taras Kopansky is the Ukrainian artist who created the art, “Metahutsulka” for the cover. His piece is inspired by Mykola Senkovsky’s famous 1926 photograph “Old Hutsulka” that won the Grand Prix at the European International Exhibition in Paris.

The translated stories have working titles, since our translators are working on them at the moment, but they will give you an idea of what you have to look forward to. You can see what a range of voices we have assembled. Each one adds something special to this collection.
Thank you for being a part of this process with us. These stories are fantastic in all senses of the word! As we approach these final days of the campaign, we hope that you’ll spread the word and help us to share these imaginative stories with an even wider audience.
Дуже дякую! Слава Україні!

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!