Thank you, L.E. Carmichael, for hosting my essay on your website.
“A long as a writer is read, he’s alive.”
Freedom to Read Week is a time to remember and preserve our intellectual right to read any book we wish to.
But if the book doesn’t exist, how do we know what we don’t know?
Since Russia launched its attacks on Ukraine, they’ve killed more than 263 literary figures, including authors, translators and scholars.
I’d like to highlight two, whose words live beyond the grave.
When Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Victoria Amelina set aside her novel-in-progress and signed up with Truth Hounds to bear witness to Russian war crimes. She went into areas recently liberated by Ukrainian forces, interviewing survivors, and photographing the devastation left behind. She chronicled the lives of ordinary women who set aside who they used to be in order to resist: sometimes with a gun; sometimes with a keyboard.
A few months in, Victoria got word that Volodymyr Vakulenko, a fellow author, had been tortured and murdered. Once Ukrainian forces liberated Volodymyr’s village, Victoria volunteered to work with the Truth Hounds group that was going into that area. She interviewed both of his parents, and she discovered that Volodymyr had hidden a diary under the cherry tree just before his arrest. Victoria found it in a plastic bag, water-logged and fragile. She got it safely to the Kharkiv Literary Museum, where the words were preserved and the manuscript restored. The diary, I’m Transforming … Occupation Diary, Selected Poems, was published in Ukraine, with a foreword by Victoria. She wrote, “As long as a writer is read, he’s alive.”
Months later, Victoria was having lunch at a pizza restaurant with a group of writers.
The restaurant was hit by an Iskander missile.
To be clear, an Iskander missile is a guided missile. The Russians aimed their missile at the pizza restaurant where kids were celebrating a birthday and writers were eating lunch. The restaurant was destroyed.
Victoria died.
Her manuscript-in-progress was preserved, and her husband, along with a group of editors, assembled the fragments into a narrative. Margaret Atwood wrote the foreword. Victoria’s book, Looking at Women Looking at War, won the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political writing.
Victoria Amelina was killed for her words, but we still have the freedom to read them. I hope that you do.
