Category:Guest Artists

Two Poems from Bucha, Ukraine

Lesyk Panasiu, with introduction by Ilya Kaminsky

Guest Artists Poetry
Ilya Kaminsky on Lesyk Panaisuk’s Poetry “Russian soldiers stayed in our building,” the poet Lesyk Panaisuk wrote to me a few weeks ago. When the war began, Lesyk left Bucha in a hurry, fleeing the Russian invasion. “War will live…

Bucha Spring

Ksenia Rychtycka

Fiction Guest Artists
This fictionalized short story is dedicated to the memory of Ukrainian artist and designer Liubov (Luba) Panchenko, who endured a month of isolation and starvation in her basement while her hometown of Bucha was under brutal Russian occupation. She survived the occupation, but died on April 30, 2022, when her heart gave out. During the Soviet era, her artwork was censored due to its focus on Ukrainian symbolism and folk culture. She was not allowed to exhibit or publish her work. She was a member of the Ukrainian Sixtiers dissident movement, that advocated for freedom of cultural and creative expression.

Sharing the Darkness

Carolyn Forché

Essays Guest Artists
I wake with a start at midnight. A nightbird striking the window? A bat in the eaves? Maybe someone in the theater of my sleep gave me a nudge—someone I don’t know in waking life. It is cloudy and warm…

The Word Beauty Within the Broken Instrument of the Body

Brian Turner

Guest Artists Music
After caring for my wife during her fight with cancer, and after caring for a family member with dementia, I cannot begin to fathom how caregivers continue their necessary work while living in Ukraine, as the full force of the Russian military brings ruin and pain and destruction to all in its path?
We were born four days apart and shared the same first name—though we didn’t meet until his family moved from Minnesota to California and into the same cul-de-sac when we were seven years old. We were raised like brothers from then on out ...