“A HOME WE’VE BUILT”

Creative Non-Fiction From Kyiv and Beyond

Photographs from the exhibit opening & book presentation at America House Kyiv

“To our hearts that always
know where home is”

On February 2, 2022, America House Kyiv (AHK) launched its long-anticipated fourth round of the Creative Writing program, aimed at helping emerging Ukrainian voices to develop their writing skills and creative expression. “A Home We’ve Built” is a print publication of written works, created by the participants as a result of the program, which ran from February to August 2022.

How the Program Took Place

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine. Before that day, participants already had two meetings with program facilitator Casey Carsel — artist, writer, and, at that time also a 2022-2023 Fulbright Student Award recipient. The program was put on a forced hold. Many participants left their homes, cities, and countries to seek safety elsewhere with an unclear vision of whether they would ever return. While the same ambiguity surrounded the Creative Writing program, the workshops resumed in April 2022 and continued to run virtually to its completion in August 2022. While the program gained additional value for its participants, the groups got smaller. Young authors came and went as they could to adjust to the necessary changes that different time zones and air raid sirens dictated. One participant, who stayed in Kyiv, often joined the meetings while being outdoors, and other participants would thank him for the glimpse of home that his video offered.

Though not intended as a wartime reflection, the unavoidable backdrop made its way into the final works, which resulted in a printed book titled “A Home We’ve Built.” The book was designed by Serhii Voronov, while the illustrations for the main eleven stories were created by Yuliia Nikolaieva. Through eleven unique stories and four additional short pieces, this book offers a glimpse into life during and in spite of war. We believe that these are stories that are crucial to be read in modern realities — that is why they are available for free public reading, while the printed books are also being distributed among other American centers across Ukraine and the world.

Apart from reflection on war, loss, love, and hope, this book is ultimately about coming home, even if home is somewhere new.

Why “A Home We’ve Built”

The title “A Home We’ve Built” came to us naturally. With every story that is featured in the publication, the authors joined the collective process of restoring a sense of home or rather home as we remember it. This is something we wanted to showcase with the book’s structure. The publication is divided into three sections that are named after a particular part of the building:

“At the Porch” is the section where the program’s facilitator, coordinator, and AHK’s Director welcome you and share a sense of what you are about to read in the publication;
“The Rooms” is the main book section, where the authors walk you through their private spaces. Each text is accompanied by an illustration. Please be respectful and attentive to what you are about to see;
“Window Glance” is a section with four additional snippets that do not take long to read, but just like a window glance, they do not leave you indifferent.

With this book, we wanted to offer a space to everyone who is going through similar challenges in their life. It shows that even during such times, it is still possible to experience hope, love, joy, and even happiness. And with that, we hope you have a thoughtful read!

A PDF version of “A Home We’ve Built” is available for free download and reading here. This electronic copy is for personal or educational use only and cannot be utilized for commercial purposes.

If you are a non-profit, non-commercial, or educational organization and are interested in receiving copies of the publication, you can reach out with a request to info@americahousekyiv.org. We are also open to proposals for cooperation on educational and public events related to the publication.

EXPLORE THE STORIES AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS HERE:

At the Porch

Let us welcome you to this home we’ve built with the three short texts from the program facilitators where they each share what this book meant for them and how this round of the Creative Writing program has evolved in the face of the Russian full-scale invasion.

On February 2, America House Kyiv held the first of ten scheduled Creative Writing Workshop sessions. Focusing on the crafting and editing of works of creative non-fiction, the workshop was meant to be held fortnightly and culminate in a publication in June. We got through two sessions before Russia began raining bombs across Ukraine and every participant’s life changed overnight.
We took a few months’ break. I had planned out the entire series in January and decided to keep most of the activities, prompts, and readings the same when we resumed sessions in April, but the nature of the responses, especially to the writing prompts, was very different than it might otherwise have been. Some of the texts in this collection were written before Russia escalated its assault on Ukrainian land and lives, but each piece was indelibly affected by that event.
Our group got smaller. Participants’ came and went as they could, dancing around the necessary changes their schedules and time zones had undergone since they first made the commitment. Some stayed in Kyiv, most travelled for at least some period of time. One participant who stayed in Ukraine often joined our video meetings while he was outdoors, and other participants would thank him for the glimpse of home his video feed offered. Many, but not all, are home again now.
In this collection you will find these emerging young writers processing the current events in the world that surrounds them. They are a thinking-through, a screaming, a celebration of strength, a mourning, a cry to the world. Though not every piece directly speaks of war, they all are in their own way marked by the time in which they were written, and provide a unique set of English-language insights into the Ukrainian landscape both within the war and beyond it.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards the America House Kyiv team for organising this workshop and giving me the opportunity to act as its facilitator this year. Most of all, I would like to thank each participant for their sincere and brave contributions to each session, for their commitment to vulnerability, and for trusting me on this journey.
Слава Україні!

Casey Carsel
Fulbright Ukraine Creative Writing Grant Recipient, 2021–22
It is 2022, and it feels like we have all become nomads.
Our nomadism is not about moving from country to country. It has nothing to do with belonging to a stable place. It’s different; we are the time nomads. Usually, people design their lives around plans. Nowadays, we don’t have this luxury. In our volatility, we cannot anchor our lives to what lies ahead. Our nomadic tribe is galloping in the present, traveling from one day to another, searching for a beautiful moment where we can stay just a little bit longer.
With this book, we invite you to join our Ijele, our masquerade of vivid moments, our “infinite journey.”
You will touch moments as fragile as your Grandmother’s porcelain cup and as gentle as the texture of purple-flower wallpaper.
You will feel them as painful as a broken tooth.
You will savor them the way you savor the first summer raspberry and inhale them like the smell of freshly baked potatoes.
These moments will feed your soul. They will wrap you up in the warmth of a blanket. They will give you a little pearl of hope or despair.
Do not be surprised if they change you too.
Maybe you will learn to play guitar, its melodies free as birds.
Maybe you will start believing in horoscopes.
While reading, you will most definitely discover your own snippets of time worth remembering.
…and with all these moments, we will create our new time.
Together we will build our new home.

Tetyana Strelchenko,
Director of America House Kyiv
When you run long enough without pausing or stopping, you eventually become one with your body. You suddenly start seeing how complex you are and begin to wonder how many more things you’ve been forgetting to notice. Here are your feet striking the ground below. Here is your heart beating to its own rhythm. And here is your breath. Can you hear it?
You are breathing heavily. You are running. You are heading home.
On February 24, your run became more intense. The road got bumpier. The distant screams were everywhere. Explosions. But, fortunately, there was also your breath. And you made it here. You are running. You are heading home.
What should have been a program to support young authors has turned into a project of immense value. With the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we left our homes behind hoping that one day we will return. Apart from reflecting on war, loss, love, and hope, this book is ultimately about coming home, even if home is somewhere new. And so, we are happy to welcome you at “The Porch,” invite you to take a look at each of the author’s “Rooms,” and we also highly recommend catching glimpses of sunlight through the “Window Glance.”
On a personal note, it has been an honor to work with such talented individuals! I am forever grateful and hope that this book will also impact someone the way it impacted me. Thank you to each of the participants for their unique voices! Thank you Yuliia Nikolaieva for adding colors to this book with your fantastic illustrations! Thank you Serhii Voronov for your outstanding design. Thank you Tetyana, Lucy, Pavlo, Anna, and the entire America House Kyiv team for offering immense support with program coordination. And, of course, thank you Casey for sharing your expertise and leading such an important program! I thank you all wholeheartedly!
And remember: when you run long enough, you become one with your body. But that does not mean that you have to run alone.

Andrii Ushytskyi
Creative Writing Program Coordinator

The Rooms

Embark on a wonderful journey with our authors as they each walk you through their rooms filled with personal reflections, memories, and thoughts.

"Walls of Algae and Grass" by Yuliia Volfovska

"Slowly Walking, Smoothly Thinking" by Yurii Yudin

"Blankets in the Form of People ~ People in the Form of Blankets" by Olena Kirichek

"…And Birds Will Sing Big" by Marta Tomakhiv

"I Don’t Believe in Horoscopes, But" by Vasylysa Snitsarenko

Window Glance

Before you leave, read these short snippets that will be just like a glance out the window to remember our wonderful friendly space.

(For those who mourn. Tell me, where exactly does it hurt?)
When your father died you felt a brown wild bear crawl into your heart and sit its fat ass right in the center of your most rhythmic organ.
Pray that bear disappear.
In the first few weeks of housing this foreign feeling you had no idea your heart was tenting a beast—its non-retractable claws sharp like this, long legs flexing like this, tail and paws giant like this, oh!
All those nights you spent rolling over in bed, you and your sister could barely sleep the whole week.
Amour up my girl! Pray that bear disappear.
Man and beast do not leave far apart for no reason.
That wild bear would rest the weight of its lower limb where your heart pumped sweet melody and, digging its claws deeper, as if aiming for your gut, the intruding beast danced the sharpness of its claws all over your chest ’til the screeching outcried your heart’s rhythm.
That is how you lost your sanity.
You first lost your rhythm to the beast, your balance fluid, delivered from gravity.
At first it flowed steadily in your head, then in your chest, and of course after wrestling the bear, the chaff of your fluid sanity trickled out your whole body like sweat.
Girl without balance, girl without sanity, girl with rhythm the screech of a wild beast’s claws.
Pray that bear disappear.
Cherries everywhere across the city.
Cherries outside a five-story house near the metro station where we sheltered.
Drops of dark red cover the trees that stretch to the second floor.
Cherries scattered on the asphalt, laying untouched.
Locals out with plastic buckets to pick the cherries from trees in a once-busy neighborhood. I never knew that my city had so many cherry trees.
The fruits they bring this summer—so ripe and so many—are pure celebration of life. Living to the fullest, to the extreme, as the opposite of nonexistence.
Of houses that no longer shelter, of land that will not grow crops, of lives that are being lost. I pick a cherry from a tree and hold it in my hand for a moment.
If only I could wash the windows. Hanging out in the open, looking down, doesn't seem scarier than the sirens. And when those start bailing, we come out of carton board shells. Only to sit right under the window and share the smoke of our lungs with each other and also the world. Somehow, pushing out smoke rings feels like chain manufacturing. We know we're tied to this danger of planes splitting the sky above us, but it's not like we're going to run. My lot is bound to these benches under a run-down building.
I wonder if the trees, too, feel the nicotine calmness of inhaling our smoke. If they could let down their branches, would they run away? And would they be willing to piggyback me to safety? But trees have a secret language only ever understood by the birds I've been watching blank-mindedly. And judging by their sorrowful cries, the anxiousness of the trees is to be shared by every living thing.
when i was a kid,
i remember i tried to picture a little hair brooch
my grandma would tell me about
a little hair brooch of hers
she had as a kid
she would tell me all about it
as the most precious thing
she had ever had in her life
a little hair brooch
she got from her father as a parting gift
when she was four
when he was leaving them for war
to fight for the country
he never believed in
a little hair brooch
she lost when she was six
somewhere in the field
while grazing villagers’ cows
while chasing one of them
because she lost her out of her [un]watchful sight
out of her unwatchful sky-blue eyes
conquered by sleep and tiredness
empty stomach and cold feet
a little hair brooch
she spent hours groping for in light green grass
swallowing salt of her tears
smearing the drops of the rain over her face
a little hair brooch
she lost forever
which meant a father to her
his only gift, her only memory of him
a little hair brooch
she would never forget
until her last day
now
when the world discovered
the price of human life
the price of peace and security
freedom of speech and freedom of choice
recognition of famines and genocides
importance of mindfulness and calm and prayer
there are still little girls
fantasizing about their dads
while grazing cows
while swallowing salt of tears because of thirst
there are still little girls
picturing their dads
who left them for war
and never gave them
a little hair brooch
to pin their hair with
to pin a memory
in their heart
now when i am a young adult
i try to forget that nothing changed between the wars

The views expressed in this publication are entirely of the contributing authors, and do not reflect the opinions of America House Kyiv, IREX, American Spaces, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, or any other partners or partner organizations who took part in the Creative Writing Program and in the preparation of this publication.

Intellectual property rights to the collection of works "A Home We've Built" belong to America House. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other kind, without attribution. It is forbidden to modify the work and create derivative works.

This publication is for non-commercial purposes only.