Back in Fall of 2007, I was living in Germany with my family. While we had been having adventures and traveling internationally, I had grown out of touch with my writing and the larger creative world.

I looked around and found a door to that creative world online: I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From that contest, I met a  group of ( Read more... )

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The video to accompany my novel The Silence of Trees has evolved into its next incarnation. New photographs have been added to the video montage.

Check it out and let me know what you think! And don’t forget to read and review the 13-page excerpt for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Read more... )

I was featured in a story on the Ukrainian radio program Svoboda Today (Svoboda Sjohodni) this evening. The radio program aired in Ukrainian and was broadcast by the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe.

The interview and feature story gave background on my biography and novel, THE SILENCE OF TREES, as well as its status in the ( Read more... )

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Many years ago I helped to produce an Independent Feature titled, The Secret by MDR Films, Inc. It was a lovely story about a dysfunctional Ukrainian American family in Chicago. One of my favorite parts of the film was the way that it captured the setting of Chicago’s Ukrainian Village.

I think I took the beauty of its gardens and architecture for ( Read more... )

I have long been fascinated with the Tarot, not just as an oracle but also as a storytelling device. In her book The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore, Cynthia Giles writes:

“Fortune/telling brings the art of the story into a personal and particular context. In our own society today, fortune/telling serves much the same purpose it has long served ( Read more... )

When I set out to write The Silence of Trees, I wanted to honor my grandmothers, my ancestors, and my family. I wanted to honor my community and the Ukrainian culture that helped to shape me.

But what is honor? What does it mean to honor? Are these ideas of honor still relevant in modern America?

The definition of honor is tied up with ideas of ( Read more... )

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