After writing the Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy over a frenzied 17 months, I tried to take a break from writing in 2025. I did manage to not write fiction, but ended up writing book contributions and other non-fiction things, including chapter four, “Crafting Historical Fiction: Rehumanizing Global Crises Through Character Development” in Sarah J. Donovan’s upcoming book, Teaching Genocide and Holocaust Education in ELA Classrooms: Language to Remember, Witness, and Repair.
I selected Russia’s current war on Ukraine as my genocide focus, and the rehumanizing of the victim exercise uses a scene from Standoff as a launching point.
