Valya Dudycz Lupescu

On February 1, we reach the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox—the Celts called it Imbolc, and it’s the season of renewal. The wheel turns, and today marks another year, another birthday for me. We are irrevocably tied to the movements and rhythms of this planet. I catch glimpses of my foremothers in the mirror. I think about the gifts I’ve inherited from them, the lessons I’ve learned, the lessons I keep re-learning. The world I inhabit is so different from the one my grandmothers lived in when they were my age, and yet history repeats, the[...]

When my short story "The Light in the Heart: A Haunting" came out in Bourbon Penn this summer, actor and voiceover artist Kirk Lawrence-Howard reached out to ask my permission to record himself reading it. Kirk had previously read one of my poems on YouTube as part of his ongoing support of Ukraine. He voiced so many poems by Ukrainian writers over the years, helping to garner support for the Ukrainian people. I told him I would be honored. I never got the chance to share that recording broadly, and then on September 3, 2024, Kirk's husband Jamie posted that Kirk[...]

I'm so happy that my story, "The Light in the Heart: A Haunting" found a home in Bourbon Penn alongside so many wonderful stories. This one is near to my heart—it's short and bittersweet, and you can read it online.  I invite you to check out the entire collection. Here's the direct link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/33/the-light-in-the-heart-a-haunting-by-valya-dudycz-lupescu [...]

I love hearing authors read their own work, especially when those authors are good readers. The first time I ever heard a "real live author" read their work was when I was in high school and went to see Anne Rice read in a bookstore in downtown Chicago. It blew my mind that I could actually talk with (well, shyly say hello to) the person who wrote it. That may have been the day authors became real people for me, watching Anne Rice sitting at a table talking to her fans. I would not be introduced to conventions or fandom for[...]

I turned fifty last weekend, although turned feels too active a verb. The earth did the turning. All I did was wake up and because of how we measure time in years around the sun, I find myself a year older. It's February, and the seasons are starting to change; the planet is doing the work of transforming from winter to spring in our Northern Hemisphere.  The world spins and we spin with it, measuring our lives in beginnings and endings: The life of a mayfly in 24 hours, the ruby-throated hummingbird in three to four years. Our beloved cats and[...]