Victoria Narizhna from Kovyla Publishing on the inspiration for “Stories from Ukraine” (Part one of three)
Victoria Narizhna at the Book Space festival held in Dnipro in September, 2021. Victoria is the founder and editor-in-chief of Kovyla Publishing, a new publishing house based out of Ukraine.
Kovyla Publishing are focused on sharing new Ukrainian voices with Western and other foreign audiences to help improve people’s understanding of Ukraine and Ukrainians. We met with their editor-in-chief, Victoria Narizhna, to discuss the inspiration for Kovyla Publishing and their first books.
What’s the Idea: What inspired you to start Kovyla Publishing?
Victoria Narizhna: It was June 2023... For some time before that, from the beginning of the full-scale invasion [of Ukraine], I was working with another very interesting Ukrainian project named Ukrainer, [which] talks a lot about the Ukrainian experience in war, not only to Western audiences, but to foreign audiences in different parts of the world. I saw a lot of good work done inside this project, but I also saw things that could be done differently.
I was a head of the big book festival in Dnipro [Book Space Fest] for the last four years before the invasion, and I worked in the Ukrainian book industry for the last almost 20 years as a translator and as an event manager. I thought that I can use this knowledge, my skills, [and] my social contacts inside the Ukrainian book industry to come up with a project to tell people outside of Ukraine [about] Ukraine in some deeper and more whole way.
When the full-scale invasion started, almost anyone who could reach foreign audiences, be it Ukrainian media, or bloggers, or writers—actually, virtually anyone—all of us started to try to explain Ukraine to the outside world, and to explain what we need to actually exist in this situation and to fight for our freedom. It showed one thing: that we [have] never told outsiders enough about ourselves. We failed to explain ourselves before the full-scale invasion, and now we needed to run as quickly as possible just to stay in one place, as Alice said in “Through the Looking Glass.”
The Book Space Fest, Dnipro, in 2021, which was organized by Victoria.
“Even before the full-scale war, it was difficult to distribute paper books from Ukraine to other countries at any scale. But then I thought...”
The Book Arsenal, a big book festival held annually, did not happen in 2022 because no one knew if it was wise to hold a big event in the center of a city constantly under assault by missiles. In 2023, we, as a society, became a bit accustomed to [the] new order of things and the air defense became better, [so] these big events were coming back on the cultural map. I remember that at this first wartime book festival, we were discussing—on several panels actually—that we do not have the simplest things in English, like some of those “Ukraine for dummies” books, to explain our history, our culture, our customs, how our mind works, [or] what kind of society we are.
I started thinking about how, with all the borders, [both] physical and mental, can we tell more about ourselves and in which form? There were a lot of websites emerging, a lot of video blogs, but I didn't know how to do all those things. But I knew how books were created. I got this sudden idea that it's very difficult to get paper books distributed if you are in Ukraine. If it’s distributed to Europe, to [the] United States, to Canada, you name it, you need a publishing house who would work with you on this, who will be printing the books not in Ukraine. Even before the full-scale war, it was difficult to distribute paper books from Ukraine to other countries at any scale. But then I thought, we live in a world of scientific miracles. We have eBooks, and those books can be instantly delivered to any part of the world, [so] maybe we should focus on that and create beautiful, meaningful deep books, but just not in paper form, and then it would be easier to deliver to the interested audience.
What’s the Idea: How did you go about developing the idea to develop eBooks featuring new authors?
Victoria Narizhna: I [brought] that idea to my colleagues from the bookspace festival I already mentioned. We worked on different projects together, some going way back, and it was the dream team. We really know each other. I knew what they [were] capable of and they knew me and my crazy ideas. They were not afraid of the scale of my crazy ideas, [and] they knew what to expect. The idea seduced them immediately. There were lights in everyone's eyes when I told about my idea to create a publishing house dedicated to creating eBooks about Ukraine in English.
That was the idea from the very beginning: to not just take existing books of famous Ukrainian writers who are already translated in other languages and [are] at least somehow known to the world. I don't think that Ukrainian publishers do it in some systematic way, but a lot were making the decision that the most important thing is to take the best authors on board, and to take their already existing texts, [perhaps] to buy time by making something quickly. We thought that is not our path because we felt that what we need now—not we as a team but we as Ukrainians—is to explain ourselves in a way [so] that the world really understands what's going on, why it's going on, and why has it [kept] going on.
The XI Book Arsenal festival, held in June, 2023 (pictured above) was the first wartime book festival held since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
“A lot of people in Europe or the Americas do not know enough about Ukraine and its place in the world, and its culture, and its people. Even to choose “should they care or not,” a lot of people care for Ukraine only because what Russia is doing is obviously wrong.”
What’s the Idea: Why was it so important to you for people to understand Ukrainians better?
Victoria Narizhna: A lot of people, even those who were very sympathetic with Ukraine, were still perplexed by a lot of things. They seemed perplexed in different ways, [including] in a very good way. For example, all the world was perplexed [that] we were able to stand for so long, and we are still able.
I think that people need to understand why Ukraine is so important. A lot of people in Europe or the Americas do not know enough about Ukraine and its place in the world, and its culture, and its people. Even to choose “should they care or not,” a lot of people care for Ukraine only because what Russia is doing is obviously wrong. You just care because you can't support the aggressor and you see that what is being done is obviously wrong. But I think that Ukraine should be cared about because it's a beautiful, amazing country with a unique culture and history that can give the world a lot. I think it's quite a noble goal to achieve, though I think that we can cheat a bit and allow a more lighthearted approach to achieve this goal. This isn’t a very big crime, even in a time of war.
When we were working on the Stories from Ukraine [series] with you, I understood how many things which are very clear for us Ukrainians are not clear for the people outside Ukraine, things that are the core of our history and identity, like Zaporozhian Cossacks [Ukrainian pronunciation is Kozaks], for example. I remember this one case when we were editing the footnote about the Zaparia Kazak [that] was very inspiring for me to think about for the future books we could make in Kovyla Publishing. There [was a phrase] like “they’re free warriors” and you had difficulty understanding it. “What do you mean free warriors?” you had to ask. And in the first version of your edit, you wrote something like, that [they] were allowed to have some kind of independence. And it dawned on me that it's not clear that they were building their society of Cossacks in a place where there was no one to “allow” them something. They live in the wild, the wildest place possible in Europe, not a part of any state at the time. It was outside of the rules. It's a beautiful thing that a lot of people outside Ukraine do not reflect on. They cannot imagine it. They know that there were some Cossacks or some warriors in the Middle Ages or something, but it's a very, very important thing for Ukrainian identity. I dare to say that this part of our history makes us so capable of standing upright right now.
A famous painting by Illia Repin (ukr. Ripyn) that illustrates the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks, an important group in the history of Ukraine and an inspiration for the defiant spirit that strengthens Ukrainians today.
What’s the Idea: What does Kovyla Publishing bring that is different?
Victoria Narizhna: We are doing something no one around has done before. There is a very vibrant book industry in Ukraine. It was struggling a bit before 2013 but now it's really revived. In 2022, [many people] were afraid that the book industry would be very damaged because of outflow. A lot of professionals in the book industry are women, and women were leaving the country because they needed to care for children, to take children to safer places. After all, men can't leave the country right now if they're under the age of 60 but women could leave the country. Also, a lot of printing facilities are situated in Kharkiv, which was constantly shelled. Now, thank God, the artillery are too far to hit it. But there were several direct hits into the printing facility that cost a lot of money for the publishing industry of Ukraine.
But despite all of that, the war brought a new life into the industry because a lot of Ukrainians started reading books by Ukrainian publishing houses, about Ukraine and by Ukrainian authors, trying to understand our own culture better. People who before were only buying international bestsellers started to research the domestic literary scene. It has kickstarted the industry, but what we are doing here [is] trying to create a unique experience for the foreign audience with something that’s never been done before.
There are many beautiful books published as a cultural diplomacy effort, but they are all separate projects, not a strategic effort. For example, there are wonderful coffee table editions about Ukrainian cuisine or art, and after the full-scale invasion, all kinds of anthologies became popular, from Ukrainian poetry to sci-fi and fantasy. But as far as I know, we are the only publishing house created specifically for communication with foreign audiences and building its portfolio from scratch to accommodate international audiences needs.
“We understood that we need to give something to ordinary readers who just want to know more and to understand better what’s happening inside Ukraine, what kind of country it is, and so on.”
What’s the Idea: Why did you choose to launch with Stories from Ukraine?
Victoria Narizhna: We were researching the scene, looking at other Ukrainian projects or foreign projects about Ukraine, what they are doing, what books they are publishing, and actually there are a lot of brilliant books about Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, different points of Ukrainian history, [and] Ukrainian society. There are a lot of books—obviously not enough, but they are there—but I think you need to already be very interested in Ukraine and Ukrainian history to read them because they are more like academic books. Some books are dedicated for the wider audiences, but a lot of them are published by universities for Ukrainian philologists, for students. We understood that we need to give something to ordinary readers who just want to know more and to understand better what's happening inside Ukraine, what kind of country it is, and so on.
We decided that the best way to start is to tell some personal stories, because nothing explains better than [personal] experience, and you can catch other people’s attention with personal stories. So, our launch publication became Stories from Ukraine, a three-volume collection of narrative non-fiction eBooks. We felt this was the proper way to capture interested Western audiences. I think it's quite a popular genre now, but what is unique about Stories from Ukraine is that each volume features not a story of one person or one family, but different stories of different persons from the same generation.
What’s the Idea: Where did that idea come from?
Victoria Narizhna: Well, it was rather a team effort. First, we just had this vague idea to publish some nonfiction on underrepresented Ukrainian topics. In brainstorms, it crystallized into the intention to publish a series of books with authentic stories of different Ukrainians, but we still didn’t know how to organize these stories, what the concept should be like.
Then one of the team members, Victoria Starykova, proposed to compose the volumes on the generational principle. She actually thought it was a dumb idea and proposed it only because we were brainstorming and in a dead end already, but the team immediately loved it. And we still get a lot of feedback that this generational structure is a fresh and deep concept. This idea really struck a chord with our beta readers and a lot of authors we were talking to because you really feel that it's explaining something without explaining. These are just people who are telling their stories of now, from when they're going through the war.
It's not that these three books are meant to be some study in Ukrainian history. The main agenda is to tell real-life stories, to give the reader a taste of what it means to be Ukrainian now. But when you are a part of a nation whose last several centuries are full of genocide, repression, war, hunger, and other very trying things, your life is history. It's like you are living history. So even if you tell the most mundane of your stories, you are always telling the history of your people. It's like you can't avoid telling the history of your nation when you start to speak about your experiences and yourself and your life. Yes, they were not meant to be books about Ukrainian history, but they are anyway.
Please support Kovyla Publishing by buying the Stories from Ukraine eBooks and telling everyone you know about these works.
Learn more about Kovyla Publishing on their website and follow them on social media.
The interview was conducted by Matthew Long using Google Meet.
Written by Matthew Long
Edited by ATP Editing