The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Sometimes in life when realization hits, making us aware that we don’t know exactly who we are or how we got there. For some, a life-changing event is the only window to a view of our world in a different light. This is where my story began. A person who had been a...
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger’s collection of short stories, Souvenirs from Ukraine, which are based on true events, shows the turmoil of the Ukrainian people during the Second World War. It is heart-breaking and captivating to read. The first story tells the tale of a...
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger, you grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota in a Ukrainian community that you’ve stated had many factions within. Do you know how those factions would view the Russian invasion? I don’t know a single Ukrainian in America, or Ukrainian-American, who...
"Glory to Ukraine!" In 1991, 2004 and 2014, the Maidan in Kyiv was the stage for three major events that etched Ukraine into the European consciousness. These were the fall of the Soviet Union, the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan respectively, the last of which...
Imogen Matthews, I understand that you wrote The Hidden Village based on Aart Visser’s book, Het Verscholen Dorp as well as some stories from your mother and your own background. Could you tell us a bit more about how your background, family stories and Visser came...
The Hidden Village is set in a small town in Holland during WW2. The story focuses in on a group of likeable and courageous characters that are faced with a seemingly impossible task. The community has gathered their forces together to protect the people in danger....
I clearly remember the time I was cycling through the leafy Veluwe woods, some 50 miles from Amsterdam, when I came across an extraordinary place I never knew existed in all the years I’d been taking family holidays in the area. I never realised it at the time, but...
How did you find the research for A Letter from Pearl Harbor in comparison to your other novels: The Berlin Zookeeper or The Secret Diary? Following on from that, do you have a set research and writing approach to a novel in general? Perhaps the big feature of my...
December 1941: the tropical warmth of the Honolulu sun beats down on Virginia or ‘Ginny’ Martin. A young, courageous and determined flying instructor posted in Hawaii from her hometown of Tennessee. Ginny is enjoying sipping on Mai Tai’s with her brother Jack and her...
Shirley Dickson, your story has its main protagonist, Lily Armstrong, join the Lumberjills, what were they? Lumberjills (known as the forgotten army) were women who ‘did their bit’ during WW2 by recruiting to The Women’s Timber Corps and working in Forestry. With men...
