[T]he concept of a download coming all at once is well documented in literature. Take for instance, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She described in the book’s introduction, having a waking dream, and she said the story appeared to her whole. And director James Cameron said the idea for Terminator came to him in a dream while he was sick in Rome, he saw the image of a metallic figure emerging from fire, and that single image became the basis of the entire franchise.

–Ky Dickens, Telepathy Tapes, Season 2, episode 3 

Ky and her guests discuss their experiences with inspiration. Their questions include: What happens if you don’t act upon an idea, does it leave you? How do artists, inventors, and thinkers come up with the same ideas at the same time on opposite sides of the world? Do places and families have creative spirits that are passed on from one person to another? How do we surrender to inspiration while maintaining the discipline of practice? What is the relationship between creativity and anxiety? Can creativity be the secret to a happy life? Never have I heard or read something that captured so many of my own personal beliefs and experiences of creativity in one place, and like so much of Ky’s work, the episode is well-made, brave in its vulnerability, and compelling. Ky is a natural storyteller, as well as someone who is a connector, attracting people from many disparate corners of the world to bring them together to collaborate on really important ideas.

There are writers who love to write, and writers who love to have written. I’m the former. I love the act of writing. When I am writing I feel as if I am doing what I was meant to do. I lose myself in the flow, time stops, the world fades, and I am immersed in the art of creation. It feels like a gift, like tapping into something greater than myself. I am filled with gratitude after completing a story or a poem, and I am happy to let it go into the world and work on the next thing. The practice of writing is for me like prayer or meditation or magic.

I believe that we are all called to find the unique ways we can co-create with the Universe.

These questions about inspiration and making art are why I decided to write the Mother Christmas trilogy. It’s as much a story about the Muses as it is about Saint Nicholas. The idea for the Mother Christmas story came into my head like one of the downloads that Ky Dickens talks about in her podcast. The majority of that story arrived fully formed more than twenty years ago, and it took that long for me to be introduced to Vic Terra, the artist living in Brazil who was meant to illustrate it. A lot of life has happened in the last two years to put the writing of Volume Two on hold, but I’m hoping to get back to it again in earnest. I’ve been getting nudges in that direction, that it’s time to prioritize the work.

However, before Mother Christmas, I wrote another very short story, “Shower Muse,” first published in 2015, in Scheherezade’s Bequest Volume 1, Issue 2. That story has a lot to do with inspiration and acts of creation. It has only appeared in print, and this felt like the right time to share online.

It’s a quick read at 825 words, and I hope you enjoy it. It’s also another story that came into my head fully formed… yes, in the shower.

***

Shower Muse

They told Delphine she couldn’t be a trickster.

“You are a Muse, and you should be proud,” said her mother, whose own calling was terpsichorean.

It was made worse somehow by Delphine’s aqueous preferences. Having grown up near the sea with Poseidon’s daughters, Delphine was drawn to the water. At first, her mother was enthusiastic, citing the great painters and poets who found inspiration in the sea. But Delphine wanted to tempt and tease, not lead and motivate.

Again Delphine’s mother put down her elegant foot, “Your calling is to inspire greatness, not perform pranks.”

Delphine never saw the difference, not really. She went to Apollo for help, but her uncle only patted her on the head and said, “Find a way to make it work, child. You are what you are.”

With mischievous delight in her heart, Delphine settled on writers and chose the shower as her modus operandi. She would feed them new ideas as was expected of her, but only when they stepped over her oracular threshold and under the stream of water.

Her traditionalist mother was suspicious, but Delphine argued fiercely that it was a modern twist on a proud legacy of Muses who dwelled in sacred baths and holy wells.

As droplets fell over their eyes and lips, Delphine whispered sonnets, stories, and screenplays into the writers’ ears. She delighted in the way they scrambled for soon-wet pads of paper, dropped devices down into puddles, and jotted words on steam-covered glass.

Sometimes the inspiration stuck, but most often it faded away as the writers grabbed their bathrobes, or busied themselves with brushes or creams. The seeds she planted would drift like dandelions into the realm of dreams, now and again revisiting the writers in sleepy reverie.

When scolded by her mother, Delphine argued that even the most fleeting of poetry could still be divinely inspired.

“An epic that exists for but a moment is not unlike a rose that begins to die when cut,” Delphine argued, grinning as she watched a playwright trying to write the idea for a brilliant comedy on her arm with wet eyeliner.

Eventually Lisovyk, trickster God of the forests, took notice and leapt across pantheons to have a word with the precocious Delphine.

“You are serving neither the Muses nor the Lords of Shadow and Misrule,” Lisovyk said, causing dandelion seeds to rain upon Delphine’s head and grow from her hair.

She shook them off and dismissed his warning, wandering off to continue her work. Lisovyk decided to teach her a lesson. He took sand from the beach and sculpted a perfect soulmate for Delphine. Lisovyk then used his magic to lead Delphine to the seashore, where the two would meet. Satisfied, Lisovyk hid to watch.

The couple instantly connected and spent hours sharing their passions. When the chariot of the dawn appeared in the sky, they sat entwined in an embrace, and as they prepared to welcome the morning with a kiss, Delphine’s soulmate broke apart into grains of sand that were swept away into the sea. Delphine sat in disbelief as Apollo lit up the world.

Still smug but slightly rueful, Lisovyk left Delphine to mourn and consider his lesson.

After time passed, Lisovyk returned and asked Delphine if she would continue to torment the writers with her fleeting inspiration.

Delphine looked at him and smiled while slipping a villanelle into the mind of a young poet shaving her legs. “I thought I might have you to thank for that night,” she said.

Lisovyk was puzzled, “Didn’t you learn about the cruelty of things that do not last?”

Delphine smiled, watching as the poet tried to write with shaving cream on the wall. “You actually helped me to better understand that my instincts were right all along,” she said. “In a way, you proved me right.”

“My gifts to the writers are twofold,” she went on to explain, “I first show them what is possible. If they have one good idea, they can have another.”

Lisovyk watched the young Muse’s face light up with conviction, and he felt something rise up in his throat that hinted at regret.

“Secondly, I’m teaching them a lesson about procrastination. When it comes to creativity and the imagination, the divine gifts are fleeting. If a writer does not act upon them, they will be lost.”

Delphine turned her attention to an aging novelist who was listening to the radio in his shower. She teased him with a snippet of an unforgettable character, then turned her attention back to Lisovyk, “Too many dawdle away their time, make excuses, seek distractions. It’s like closing your eyes to a sunset. Another one will come along, if you live to see it, but it will never be the same one.”

Lisovyk skulked away, then stopped under a waterfall to cool down. As he stood under the rushing waters, inspiration rained down upon him, and Lisovyk laughed.

***

The post Co-Creating with the Universe: A Podcast and a Story first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.

I catch glimpses of my foremothers in the mirror. I think about the gifts I’ve inherited from them, the lessons I’ve learned, the lessons I keep re-learning. The world I inhabit is so different from the one my grandmothers lived in when they were my age, and yet history repeats, the cycle continues, the more things change…

In a LIFE Magazine profile of James Baldwin (May 1963), Baldwin is quoted as saying,

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.”

So much wisdom. We see ourselves in the footprints left on pages. We leave our own for those who come after us. I find myself thinking a lot about what this world is going to look like for my children.

This last year was one of the hardest for me, as it has been for so many. What can we do when the world seems out of control around us: wars, division, a planet being poisoned and aflame. If you believe as I do, that our purpose in this life is to love each other to the best of our ability, it’s hard to make sense of the many who fall back on fear and hatred instead.

We grieve. We rage. We turn to one another. We love in spite of everything. In the maelstrom, I turn to my rituals and practices, those things that slow me down, that ground me: offering a morning toast to my beloved ancestors, baking and breaking bread, incense and candles on my altar. I call upon the those who have walked before me on this path. I look to the teachers and elders who offer wisdom and ways to work with the land, to honor this planet that is our home, to find ways to heal it and hopefully someday heal ourselves.

One of the voices that has really resonated in my heart this past year is Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s. In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, she writes,

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”

I love that. It feels true. There is a lot of work to be done in the year(s) to come, and we all have a part to play. We are all connected.

I turn again to Nature as teacher, this time to the words of biologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Sheldrake writes about how mushrooms and mycelium challenge our ways of thinking about life. From the microbial systems inside our bodies to the broadest networks of roots that stretch across hundreds of miles, we are connected in a series of complex systems.

Sheldrake writes, “Their ability to cling on—and often flourish—through periods of catastrophic change is one of their defining characteristics. They are inventive, flexible, and collaborative.” We have much to learn from fungi, and from the rest of Nature, but that requires slowing down and paying attention, shifting our awareness and expectations.

Writing is one of the things that brings me the most joy in life, and yet this last year I have done very little active writing. That’s something I’m trying to change in the year to come, and I record it here to mark my intention. It’s not always easy to make time for those things that ultimately nourish our heart and spirit, but it is important work. Maybe that will mean more blogging, hopefully it means completing the second volume of the graphic novel and maybe wrapping up some short stories and poems in the works.

I am a believer that reading, researching, daydreaming, and living are all parts of the creative process, and those I have done. I hope that the seeds planted in my imagination take root and flower in the springtime as the world around us turns green and comes back to life. I hope that the seeds you have planted also take root and grow.

Footprints.
Records of a spiritual history.
A season of renewal.

I leave you with one more quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer. Can you imagine if we lived this way, if we treated each other and the planet with this kind of love and respect? It’s a beautiful vision and a lovely blessing:

“Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need. Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

 

The post Footsteps, Connections, and Another Year first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.

I never got the chance to share that recording broadly, and then on September 3, 2024, Kirk’s husband Jamie posted that Kirk Lawrence-Howard passed away from complications of Covid that morning.

In the months since his death, I have listened to many of Kirk’s recordings. He had a gift for capturing the heart of powerful words, drawing from his more than 40 years of theatrical performance experience. Many of them are archived here on his YouTube channel, Bespoke Vocals: https://www.youtube.com/@bespokevocals 

I wanted to post Kirk’s reading of my haunted house story on Halloween, because this is the day when many of us honor the ancestors, our Beloved Dead who have passed from this life into the Mystery that lies beyond. On this day, as costumed children go off to collect their treats, many of us light candles, review photographs, prepare recipes written in the handwriting of the dead, raise our glasses, tell stories or sit in reflective silence…and remember.

“The Light in the Heart” is a love story at its core, something that Kirk immediately understood and captured so beautifully. I share this recording to honor him in gratitude and remembrance. On this day when we reflect on love that can no longer be held by earthly bodies, we gather with those who remain, and we send that love out into the cracks and shadows of the Unknown.

Вічная Пам’ять. May their memory be eternal.

The post Haunted Blessings first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.

I’m so happy that my story, “The Light in the Heart: A Haunting” found a home in Bourbon Penn alongside so many wonderful stories.

Here’s the direct link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/33/the-light-in-the-heart-a-haunting-by-valya-dudycz-lupescu

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I would not be introduced to conventions or fandom for another 20 years, but I did discover Stars Our Destination bookstore in college, which had a schedule of authors coming in to read and sign. Chicago was a frequent stop, and I was finally able to meet a few of my favorite authors in various bookstores around the city.

Today, thanks to the internet, we can watch readings from all over the world—live and recorded—and now I’m delighted to enjoy readings by writer-friends and colleagues who live in other cities and countries. It helps to hold me over until the next time I get to travel or attend a conference, where I can see and hug them in person.

This weekend, Atthis Arts hosted a reading on YouTube, featuring our publisher, Emily Bell, as well as two of the authors and two of the translators from Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora: 

“The Rainbow Bridge” by Iryna Pasko,
translated by Hanna Leliv

“The Bike Shadow” by Yaryna Katorozh,
translated by Kateryna Darchyk

I was celebrating my birthday with my family when the reading was live on the air, so I watched the entire video the next day, grinning at the screen the entire time.

Translator Kateryna Darchyk hosted and did a wonderful job addressing both English and Ukrainian audiences. The two stories were read in their original Ukrainian by the authors; then Hanna read her translation of “The Rainbow Bridge” and Emily read Kateryna’s translation of “The Bike Shadow.”

It was SO good! Such a joy to listen to the stories read aloud after having read and worked with them while editing the anthology.  I invite you to check it out here:

The reading was free, but they were also raising money to help the Hospitallers in Ukraine, a volunteer organization of paramedics founded by Yana Zinkevich at the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine in 2014. The slogan of the Hospitallers is “Заради кожного життя” (“For the sake of every life”).

As we approach the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of February 24, 2022, organizations like the Hospitallers are doing such important work to help the people of Ukraine. You can donate at their website: https://www.hospitallers.life/ 

The physical books are still in customs in Kyiv on their way to our  authors and editors in Ukraine. They have not yet had the chance to hold Embroidered Worlds in their hands, but we are hoping that they soon will.

Thank you once more to everyone who helped us to make and share Embroidered Worlds. As Emily mentioned during the reading, if there are book clubs, libraries, or schools who are interested in reading Embroidered Worlds, they can get in touch with Atthis Arts.

The Embroidered Worlds Kickstarter project is eligible to be nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work, and I’m eligible as one of the editors for Best Editor, Short Form. The following is from the Atthis Arts website:

We are asking you to consider “The Embroidered Worlds Funding Campaign” by Valya Dudycz Lupescu and E.D.E. Bell for Best Related Work. This includes our work securing an international grant after the already received grant was rescinded, and our community and culture celebrating crowdfunding campaign at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/embroidered-worlds/ featuring guest writers from around the world. Because of the grant requirements, the entire process from the start of crowdfunding through translation, editing, sensitivity reading, typesetting, and production, to full publication was done within eleven weeks starting 01 September 2023. This late-in-the-year release was therefore necessary after previous external delays, but put us in a difficult position for awards visibility.

The website also lists short stories from the collection that are eligible, as well as several other authors, editors, and stories that are eligible and were published by Atthis Arts. I am honored to be in such good company.

The post Hear Ukrainian Fantastic Stories Read Aloud first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.

It’s February, and the seasons are starting to change; the planet is doing the work of transforming from winter to spring in our Northern Hemisphere.  The world spins and we spin with it, measuring our lives in beginnings and endings: The life of a mayfly in 24 hours, the ruby-throated hummingbird in three to four years. Our beloved cats and dogs may get 10 to 15 years. Macaws can live 60 to 80 years old, and Galapagos Giant Tortoises can live to be over 100. On the other end of that spectrum, there are Redwoods in California that are 2000 years old and a Norway spruce on Fulufjället Mountain, Sweden has lived over 9,500 years.

I must be ancient to the mayfly and barely register in the long life of that Norway spruce.

Age is most definitely relative.

Yet just like the other creatures, all we get is a lifetime, and we don’t usually know how long that is going to be.

In the days leading up to and following my birthday, I have been filled with gratitude for the experiences and relationships of my fifty years: the love I have been given and shared, the stories that shaped me, the people I have known, the moments of joy and wonder that froze time.

I think about the others who have moved through this milestone before me: friends who have been talking honestly about their experiences of aging, wise women and teachers who share lessons about physical and mental health, as well as beloved elders who walk even farther ahead and lead by example. I am honored to walk in their footsteps.

I’ve been taking walks to break away from my work on the computer, spending time really paying attention to the natural world without the distraction of technology, because I truly believe that nature is our greatest teacher.

Again and again, I come back to the trees. Trees, like the rich black earth they grow in, are sacred in the stories of my Ukrainian ancestors, in our songs, in our folklore, in our embroidery and pysanky. Trees also feature in my poetry, my stories, my spiritual practices and traditions.

I believe trees have much to teach us, and here’s the thing…When I think about the beloved elders in my life, the older they get, the more they resemble the ancient tree-people. They stop being contained and defined by family and cultural expectations. Like the trees, they have allowed themselves to unapologetically grow into their full power. They may not be loud—strength can be quiet. They may not be theatrical—not all trees have showy blooms. But once trees get to a certain age, they are a landmark for life around them. Trees reshape the landscape.

I think about my Baba, Parania, my earliest example of a matriarch. She was a force of nature and the heart of our Dudycz family. Sometimes when I stand beside an ancient tree, solid and thick and in full bloom, I am reminded of being in Baba’s presence when I was little. There was a gravity to Baba’s love and protection.

Like our tree-sisters, the queens and crones of a certain age allow themselves to spread and stretch, to fill the space, to reach for the sun. They protect those who come to them. They provide shelter and refuge. They stand in the face of storms, and they dance even when eyes are watching. They reshape the landscape.

I am aware that I am losing some of the “gifts” of youth, and there are days where I’m surprised by some physical change or another. But I bristle any time I’m told that “I look good for my age.” Because that starts from the assumption that women of a certain age are no longer beautiful, and I reject that. I think that older women are beautiful, not “beautiful for their age or despite their age” but beautiful because of their age.

I took this photograph in the morning with no makeup or filters. This is me at fifty with a new birthday mug and some delicious coffee.

When I look in the mirror, I’m not afraid of the wrinkles or grey hairs. I am working to remain strong and healthy, but I’m not trying to turn back any clock. I love this little belly that has carried three children, these calves that have danced for decades, these hands that have kneaded bread and sore muscles, these near-sighted eyes with their growing frame of lines that have allowed me to see so much of this world. Sometimes they ache, sometimes they take a while to warm up, but they still allow me to do things that I love. And like my ancestors and the elders in my circle, as well as my dear tree-sisters, the work of my next fifty years, if I’m so blessed, is to continue to grow more fully into myself.

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A desperate trek through the icy canyons of Mars, a doll-sized family with giant-sized opinions, a defiant princess whose fate must remain a secret… Welcome to the wild, colorful, and ever-blossoming landscapes of the Ukrainian imagination. Embroidered Worlds presents a bold glimpse into fantastic storytelling throughout Ukrainian culture, from science fiction, fantasy, and horror to slipstream, fairy tales, and more.

This collection gathers 30 short stories from writers living in wartime Ukraine, their work translated into English for the very first time, as well as from international authors of Ukrainian heritage. Come, now, and experience the magic, the terror, and the wonder-filled surprises of the worlds they’ve brought to life.

It’s a beautiful book, put together by a team of talented and dedicated people. I’m so excited that it’s out in the world, and soon physical copies will be in the hands of readers. Thank you to our publisher, Atthis Arts, for making this all possible.

As soon as the Kickstarter campaign successfully funded, the translators, publishers, and editorial team hit the ground running to get Embroidered Worlds ready for print to meet our deadline—long days and nights spent communicating over time zones, hundreds of emails, dozens of messages, so many drafts, each one improving upon the previous version. We did it! This creative community came together to verify words, edit content, fine-tune intention, and review all the many details.

AND as we were doing that, Ukrainian pysanka artist Anna Chychula was at work crafting this beautiful, one-of-a-kind fantastic Embroidered Worlds pysanka!

I love seeing the energy of this project manifest in this beautiful pysanka. You can read more in Anna’s Embroidered Worlds Kickstarter guest post here.

AND here’s a peek at our limited edition Embroidered Worlds bookplates being printed at Bookplate Ink, in Yellow Springs Ohio!

I have more to share about the process of editing this anthology and the stories and writers and translators, and I’m hoping that things can slow down a little during the end of this year so that I have time to catch up with writing and posts and upcoming projects! This is Mother Christmas season after all….

Blessings of peace and love during this season.

The post Embroidered Worlds Release Day!!! first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.

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Taras Kopansky is the Ukrainian artist who created the art, “Metahutsulka” for the cover. His piece is inspired by Mykola Senkovsky’s famous 1926 photograph “Old Hutsulka” that won the Grand Prix at the European International Exhibition in Paris.

The post A Few More Days first appeared on Valya Dudycz Lupescu.