Embroidered Worlds Release Day!!!

Today is the official release day for Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora!!!

A desperate trek through the icy canyons of Mars, a doll-sized family with giant-sized opinions, a defiant princess whose fate must remain a secret… Welcome to the wild, colorful, and ever-blossoming landscapes of the Ukrainian imagination. Embroidered Worlds presents a bold glimpse into fantastic storytelling throughout Ukrainian culture, from science fiction, fantasy, and horror to slipstream, fairy tales, and more.

This collection gathers 30 short stories from writers living in wartime Ukraine, their work translated into English for the very first time, as well as from international authors of Ukrainian heritage. Come, now, and experience the magic, the terror, and the wonder-filled surprises of the worlds they’ve brought to life.

It’s a beautiful book, put together by a team of talented and dedicated people. I’m so excited that it’s out in the world, and soon physical copies will be in the hands of readers. Thank you to our publisher, Atthis Arts, for making this all possible.

As soon as the Kickstarter campaign successfully funded, the translators, publishers, and editorial team hit the ground running to get Embroidered Worlds ready for print to meet our deadlinelong days and nights spent communicating over time zones, hundreds of emails, dozens of messages, so many drafts, each one improving upon the previous version. We did it! This creative community came together to verify words, edit content, fine-tune intention, and review all the many details.

AND as we were doing that, Ukrainian pysanka artist Anna Chychula was at work crafting this beautiful, one-of-a-kind fantastic Embroidered Worlds pysanka!

I love seeing the energy of this project manifest in this beautiful pysanka. You can read more in Anna’s Embroidered Worlds Kickstarter guest post here.

AND here’s a peek at our limited edition Embroidered Worlds bookplates being printed at Bookplate Ink, in Yellow Springs Ohio!

I have more to share about the process of editing this anthology and the stories and writers and translators, and I’m hoping that things can slow down a little during the end of this year so that I have time to catch up with writing and posts and upcoming projects! This is Mother Christmas season after all….

Blessings of peace and love during this season.

 

Ukrainian Folk Arts in The Silence of Trees

The folk arts of the Ukrainian people are an intrinsic expression of their spirit and heritage. Ukrainian folk arts are diverse and include wood carving, beading, folk dancing, vyshyvka (embroidery), pysanky, cooking, music, costumes, oral tradition, and more.

It would be impossible for me to tell an authentic story without including a few aspects of the rich Ukrainian traditions, so folk arts are certainly a part of my ABNA entry, The Silence of Trees.In my novel, Nadya connects to her homeland with her vyshyvka (the sewing of embroidery). Her eldest daughter, Katya (named after Nadya’s aunt who drowned) is a pysanka artist.

The Silence of Trees is a novel about stories–their power to heal, to connect, to transform. In Chapter Three, Katya teaches her niece how to make Ukrainian pysanky. As the two woman apply wax to the eggs, Nadya works on her embroidery.

Katya's Pysanka

This is the pysanka that Katya describes making in the chapter. In the interest of providing readers with bonus materials and supplemental goodies, my Web site, www.thesilenceoftrees.com features an essay by the fictional Katya, which provides a little background about the art of crafting pysanky.

In the coming weeks I will be uploading more information about Ukrainian folklore and folk arts to my Web site, so be sure to check back often.

(The actual creator of this pysanka is Adriana Wrzesniewski, pysanka artist and teacher. You can visit her site at www.pysanka.com)