{"id":10095,"date":"2025-09-18T15:25:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T15:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/?p=10095"},"modified":"2025-09-18T15:25:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T15:25:32","slug":"bloor-west-village-ukrainian-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/bloor-west-village-ukrainian-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What an amazing Festival! It was so nice to see so many old friends and present books one and two of my Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy at the Speakers&#8217; Corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10098\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-2048x1535.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/actandshine-1200x899.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Loved having kids from Act &amp; Shine Kids&#8217; Acting Studio read the opening pages of Under Attack, book #1 of my Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy today at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/torontoukrainianfestival?__tn__=-]K*F\">BWV Toronto Ukrainian Festival<\/a>.<br>I read and spoke, but unlike these talented kids, I neither sang nor danced!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10097\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha-1200x1600.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/valentinamarsha.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">t was nice to see Valentina Kuryliw today at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/torontoukrainianfestival?__tn__=-]K*F\">BWV Toronto Ukrainian Festival<\/a>. I had the honour of working with Valentina&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/holodomorresearch?__tn__=-]K*F\">Holodomor Research and Education Consortium &#8211; HREC<\/a>\u00a0in 2022\/2023 when my Holodomor novel, Winterkill was brand new. In addition to my directly booked presentations. HREC funded 30 extra virtual visits with underfunded schools, meaning I was able to educate thousands more students who otherwise might not have known about this genocide, which in many ways is a precursor to what Putin is doing now in Ukraine.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What an amazing Festival! It was so nice to see so many old friends and present books one and two of my Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy at the Speakers&#8217; Corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262],"tags":[978,979,636,353,7,609],"class_list":["post-10095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-stories","tag-actandshine","tag-bwvuf","tag-hrec-ed","tag-scholastic","tag-ukrainian","tag-winterkill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10099,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10095\/revisions\/10099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}