At the end of December, as the longest night of the year slowly seeps into the room, I light candles and make a Didukh. I weave this keeper of ancestral stories out of dry wheat stalks and distant memories of a sheaf that my grandfather brought into the house on Christmas Eve. “Didukh in the house, trouble out of the house,” he would say as he placed it under the icons framed by rushnyks, embroidered towels that decorated the walls of every room at my grandparents’ place.
Geometry of Meaning was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize 2023 and selected as the semi-finalist of Shevchenko Foundation’s 2025 Emerging Writers Short Prose Competition. Here’s the full essay along with some photos of my grandmother’s rushnyks. My grandmother’s rushnyk spreads out on the wall like wings of a colourful bird about to take flight. … Continue reading Geometry of Meaning
Fantastic Fungi and Where to Find Them was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize 2020. Here’s the full essay along with some photos of fantastic fungi foraged over the years.
Continue reading “Fantastic Fungi and Where to Find Them”
Stories of Entangled Life 