PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
An author of both creative nonfiction and popular fiction, ARTEM CHAPEYE was born and raised in the small Western Ukrainian city of Kolomyia and has spent much of the last twenty years living in Kyiv. He is the author of two novels and four books of creative nonfiction, and is a co-author of a book of war reportage. A four-time finalist of the BBC Book of the Year Award, his recent collection The Ukraine was one of three finalists in the award's new nonfiction category in 2018. Artem is an avid traveler who spent close to two years living, working, and traveling in the U.S. and Central America-an experience that has greatly informed his writing. His work has been translated into seven languages, and has appeared in English in the Best European Fiction anthology and in publications such as Refugees Worldwide, translated by Marian Schwartz. Artem is a past recipient of the Central European Initiative Fellowship for Writers in Residence (Slovenia) and the Paul Celan Fellowship for Translators (Austria), as well as a finalist of the Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism. He serves on the board of PEN Ukraine. ZENIA TOMPKINS is an American literary translator and founder of The Tompkins Agency for Ukrainian Literature in Translation (TAULT, tault.org). Her published books include adult fiction, adult nonfiction,and children's. Zenia's work as a translator and promoter of Ukrainian literature has been featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, BBC Radio, National Public Radio, and Public Radio International. She is devoting 2023 and 2024 to working exclusively with Ukrainian authors who have enlisted in Ukraine's armed forces since the Russian invasion. Since its inception in 2019, TAULT has worked with over one hundred of Ukraine's top and emerging authors.
"""Artem Chapeye shares with us a brilliant screenshot of Ukrainian life. This prose deserves all our attention."" —Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv ""The Ukraine is a startling and genuinely delightful set of stories from a writer now serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Artem Chapeye writes with warmth and brilliance, giving us ‘the Ukraine’ that in all its complexity, comedy, and beauty the author is now fighting to defend."" —Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries ""The Ukraine—with the definite article—becomes code for the gritty reality of the country. At the same time, the [title] story is a kind of love letter to that gritty reality."" —The New Yorker ""A unique vision of Ukraine, with and without the ""the,"" Artem Chapeye's book is also a tender and melancholic confession of love, to a beloved and to a homeland by turns, a confession made all the more poignant by the premonition of death."" —Liliana Corobca, author of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize winner The Censor's Notebook and, forthcoming, Kinderland ""Journalist Chapeye’s gritty and perceptive debut collection gathers fiction and essays written from 2010 to 2018 to portray everyday life in Ukraine. The atmospheric opener, “Pan Ivan and the Three Bears,” follows a group of adventurous hunters through the frigid Sheshul Mountains. A stranger invites them to his cabin, where he recites three epic tales about man versus wild beasts. The broken family in the heart-wrenching “Sonny, Please...” struggles to survive in Kyiv amid poverty and strife between a grandmother and her alcoholic grandson. The nonfiction entry “Marmalade” describes an illegal excursion to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where “self-settlers” have chosen to call the forbidden irradiated landscape home. Chapeye, who has since enlisted in the Ukraine Armed Forces and wrote the book’s introduction from the front lines of the war against Russia, remarks that his entire family now lives in a tent city after evacuating Kyiv. Embedded within each character-driven piece is evidence of the passion, solidarity, and resilience of Ukrainian people. Chapeye’s grim stories resonate."" —Publishers Weekly"
