Kyivsky Waltz | Київський Вальс
a love story | історія кохання
KS Lack | КШ Лек
Published March 2024 from Finishing Line Press
Kyivsky Waltz is both timely and timeless. Through a masterful interweaving of poems, typeset, and images, this chapbook takes the reader on a lyrical journey through Kyiv in the 1990s, as experienced by a perceptive and heartbreakingly honest young American woman…
— Nicole Svobodny, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Kyivsky Waltz leads us through the steps of a transformation, the one that inevitably occurs in the encounter of a foreign place, and of its inhabitants and culture….With this heartfelt collection, Lack reminds us that love, like language, is a pas de deux.
–– Beatrice Szymkowiak, author of B/RDS.
Lyrically evocative, Kyivsky Waltz captures a time when the future both of Ukraine and of one young woman held out plentiful promise and unpredictable possibilities…
— William V. Madison, former producer at CBS News and author of Madeline Kahn: Being the Music, A Life
All of the author’s proceeds from this publication will be donated to Razom, an NGO dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
To find out more or donate directly to Razom for Ukraine
CLICK HERE.
While Kyivsky Waltz chronicles my time living in Ukraine in the mid 1990s, my companion project—Sunflower Variations—serves as a counterpoint, addressing the present invasion and ongoing humanitarian crisis. As with Kyivsky Waltz, all of my proceeds will be donated to Razom. Click here to find out more.
About the Author
From 1994 to 1996, KS lived in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she helped start Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (The Mirror Weekly), one of Ukraine’s first independent newspapers.
KS Lack is a writer and artist interested in transcending constraints by working with them. Her work has been featured in a variety of galleries and publications; her mixed-media project, Sunflower Variations: this is Ukraine, which addresses the current war in Ukraine, will be shown in Hudson Valley in November 2024. She received degrees in Post-Soviet Studies from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. A founding member of the Introspective Collective consortium of artists, she has been living with disability and chronic pain since childhood.
Photo by Thomas Gallagher/Konrad Will