Sasha Vasilyuk
@SashaVasilyuk
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Journalist & author of novel YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY ( @bloomsburypub ) also in 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 🇧🇷 🇮🇱🇫🇮 . ✍️ @nytimes @Time @harperbazaarus @CNN @latimes
San Francisco, CA
Joined April 2015
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Pinned Tweet
As an immigrant who barely spoke English when I arrived to San Francisco at 13, it is much more than *a thrill* to have my debut novel at the legendary
@CityLightsBooks
😭
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In Kyiv, my 18-y-old nephew welded a power strip to an exercise bike. Now when someone exercises, they charge phones and light up the Xmas tree!
#UkraineWillWin
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My grandpa - the inspiration for my novel - would have turned 100 today. A Ukrainian Jew, he survived Holodomor, captivity in Nazi Germany, and having to keep his past a secret in USSR. He lived in the Donbas and I’m glad he isn’t having to survive one more mess.
#UkraineWar
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“Navalny is a hero. Putin is a coward” - in front of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw
#Navalny
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Know of any Ukrainian or Russian refugees landing in San Francisco? My husband’s company can provide accommodations. Pls spread the word
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You see that tiny letter Z? That appeared today all over my 10–y-old nephew’s online school assignments in Moscow. Things are bad, y’all.
#RussianPropaganda
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Sold my first books last night (!) and donated all proceeds to humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Which feels double-amazing! Thank you readers. 🙏🇺🇦
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Please meet the cover of my debut novel Your Presence is Mandatory!
See the cover for
@SashaVasilyuk
's forthcoming debut book YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY!
Learn more about the design process and pre-order the historical fiction book 👉 👉 👉
@BloomsburyPub
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A friend of a friend attended a wedding in Kyiv yesterday, on first day of war. Instead if a white dress, the bride wore a Ukrainian national costume.
#Ukraine
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My aunt just found an autobiography that grandpa - THE grandpa that my novel is inspired by - wrote in 1951, when Stalin was still alive. And I’m like Holy shit! Do I put that in the book? Edits are due in a month…. 🫤
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Without the bike, today’s 33-hr blackout would have been tough, says my cousin
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When immigrating in ‘96, my mom shipped our entire library to California. Because who are you on a new continent, without books?
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The title! The cover! This is a must read.
It’s here! U.S. publication day for THE WAR CAME TO US: LIFE AND DEATH IN UKRAINE! Huge gratitude to
@BloomsburyBooks
@BloomsburyPub
for believing in it from the start, and to the many Ukrainians who shared their stories over the years. Get your copy in bookstores across America!
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Full house for Voices for Ukraine with
@ilya_poet
@katiefar
@OlgaLivshin
@OlenaJennings
@returnstosender
@suvorovawrites
@SashaVasilyuk
@bowlga
& more, sponsored by
@brackenmagazine
@uwtranslation
@simpson_center
@UwSlavic
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It’s not easy to look with fresh 👀 at a text you’ve spent years writing/dreaming/sweating. Now that I’m doing my last pass, I’m surprised at how happy I am with the way this story came out. If you fancy, pre-order links are up on
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So grateful to
#Poland
for welcoming Ukrainian refugees. When I moved to Warsaw in 2016, I found Poles to be extremely welcoming to a Russian-American like myself. A great country, despite its own socio-political problems.
#ukrainianrefugees
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I mean, does it get cooler than your hometown NPR station that you listen to every morning saying THIS about your debut? Thank you, thank you 🙏
@KQED
&
@nananastia
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Your Presence is Mandatory, my debut novel about a Ukrainian Jewish vet and his family that spans from WW2 till Russia-Ukraine war comes out 4/23 via
@BloomsburyPub
. Grateful to Lara Prescott,
@Shteyngart
,
@KateQuinnAuthor
and other amazing authors who’ve read $ loved this novel
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I wrote this essay about
#Navalny
through tears 💔
Navalny’s reported death extinguished the last hope I had for my former home – Read more from
@SashaVasilyuk
here:
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Meet LA’s phenomenal writers hailing from the former USSR! Loved reading along
@katyaapekina
@ruthmadievsky
@InnaEffress
@thesoviette
@YelenaFurman
at Stories Books & Cafe.
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Putin’s war in Ukraine has splintered the Soviet diaspora - my op-ed in today’s
@latimes
:
#UkraineWar
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Got this from a writer I admire who just read my novel… 🥹😭
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6 weeks till pub date 😬
My non-writer friends: You must be so excited!!!
My writer friends: R u OK? How are you handling it?.. 🤣
#authorlife
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On my nightstand: a lot of Ukraine from
@kcengel
@AKurkov
@serhiy_zhadan
, some USSR and a dash of Italy. What’s on yours?
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My 4-mo-old niece spent most of her day in a bomb shelter in
#Kyiv
. What a way to begin a life.
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Last night 8 authors from the former USSR read at
@irckc
to raise $$ for a youth poetry studio in Ukraine and, in the process, made Kansans (and each other) laugh & 😭. A stunning event w/
@katyaapekina
@mashawrites
@lenazycinsky
@jkdpoetry
@VladaTeper
#awp
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Thank you
@mcnallyjackson
, the team
@BloomsburyPub
, my agent
@michellebrower
@trellislit
for making YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY a reality! Look at all these beautiful friends & strangers who came out for the book launch in NYC! 🙏🎉🇺🇦❤️
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So at last night’s San Francisco book launch, 2 guys showed up because they just came back from Maui where they saw someone reading Your Presence Is Mandatory by the pool… 😱 Thanks to
@Booksmith
for hosting such an amazing night.
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Becoming a 1st time author can be emotionally destabilizing. Last 2 weeks have been very 😁/😭. But yesterday I had a total Dream Author Day: spoke at a Rotary Club to raise $$ for Ukraine, signed LOTS of books at the library, and visited Stanford students who’ve loved my book.
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Most people have never seen self-driving cars. In San Francisco, we see one every single time we drive. And let me tell you, they are very dissatisfying to honk at.
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Sent off 2nd edits on my novel! To celebrate, made Uzbek lamb pilaf. Traditionally, only men are supposed to make it. But traditionally, war novels are also written by men. I say screw tradition.
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What a gift for pub day -
@ruthmadievsky
interviewed me about YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY for
@esquire
🎉😱🙏😭🇺🇦 “Writing Through the War in Ukraine”
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Listening to famous Russian author Vladimir Sorokin w/ his translator
@maxdaniellawton
. When Sorokin said he hasn’t been able to write a single line of fiction since the war began, I began to cry. Thanks
@Litquake
for organizing this.
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Best essay I’ve read in a while: “Being able to prepare for death is a complicated luxury.” Loving all the Soviet, Jewish, Ukrainian, immigrant, war, family, and language themes here.
"How strange that we put on our best when meeting people who will see us naked, sick, or dead." Today at
@longreads
,
@MLevantovskaya
reflects on helping her grandparents to make their own funeral arrangements.
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My beloved aunt, which has made
@nytopinion
appearances, is finally LEAVING Donbas! Despite 9 years of war and her strong opposition to the separatist regime, it took a cancer diagnosis for her to finally abandon her home. She’s heading to Kyiv where she was born.
#UkraineWar
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Here's a list of 2024 English-language books by Soviet émigré authors, featuring
@shustry
@katyaapekina
@ruthmadievsky
@znayberg
, Paul Goldberg and yours truly.
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Tiny me, sandwiched between the giant of contemporary Russian lit Vladimir Sorokin and his brilliant young translator
@maxdaniellawton
as part of
@litquake
#litquake
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Well I’ll be damned.
@AppleBooks
selected YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY as its April Debut they love.
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Today: Brother’s friends in Moscow detained for protesting; cousin in Kyiv spends 3rd night in the basement with kids; aunt in Donbas has lost all phone connections; I’ve sent my
@NYTimesOpEd
piece to my Russian classmates in hopes of fighting info war.
#UkraineRussiaWar
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5.7 million Soviet soldiers were captured by the Nazis. Some of these POWs had the added misfortune of being Jews… After the war, only 5000 Jewish POWs made it home. My grandpa was one of them. My novel-in-progress is inspired by his story.
#NeverForget
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One of the best parts of being part of the literary community is seeing books by friends at a bookstore and going “Hey, I know them!” Today in the Bestsellers section of
@BooksIncStores
novels by
@ginathechung
@vanessa_hua
and
@Nina_Schuyler
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So my manuscript is due in 10 days. Mom calls and says she has two tips for me: “1. Perfect is the enemy of good. 2. More isn’t always better.” 😄
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Gary
@Shteyngart
was kind enough to call my book ELEGIAC & NECESSARY. 🥹 Go ahead, and look up elegiac…
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After fleeing
#Donbas
in 2014 my cousin thought he’d finally rebuilt his life. He got married, bought a condo in Kyiv, became a father. Now his 4-mo-old sleeps in the basement to the sound of air sirens while his wife and dog keep her milk warm.
#UkraineRussiaWar
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When your Ethiopian taxi driver in Seattle busts out in fluent Russian cuz he studied law at Moscow State University in the 1980s…! 😱
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My dad, who would/should have turned 70 today and who was known to the world as a psychologist, has a poetry collection out. At long last, me and him can share a literary shelf.
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Putin isn’t ‘liberating’ my family. He is subjugating them. My op-ed on referendums and annexation in
@nytimes
#Donbass
People in occupied regions of Ukraine are holding referendums on whether to become a part of Russia. “For many people,” says
@sashavasilyuk
, “what that really means is they will be forcibly absorbed into a country they do not want to be a part of.”
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Is there a better way to procrastinate finishing your novel edits (due in April!) than hanging out at
@CityLightsBooks
and buying other people’s novels?
@J_Escoffery
@SashaHemon
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Yesterday a friend proselytizing “AI as the future” made me wonder why the f did I write about the past, WW2 & Soviet memory. Today, I listened to
@bowlga
, Polina Barskova, Tatsiana Zamirouskaya talking about WW2, grandpas and silence, and thought ‘This is why’.
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My debut novel will soon be available for pre-order. If you’re curious about it, leave your email on . Backstory thread:
1. Six years ago, I moved to Berlin. My entire life I had associated Berlin with Grandpa /
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Most of you have likely never been to Soviet emigre banquet halls spread through U.S. cities. I’ve always thought them garish, but
@BorisDralyuk
paints them as a beautiful, disappearing world full of nostalgic childhood pop and “ziggurat of fresh beef”
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This was a tough one… I grew up between Ukraine and Russia. Here I write on how this war - going on for 10 years, not 2 - changed my identity.
Author
@SashaVasilyuk
grew up in both Russia and Ukraine. She reflects on how the war dramatically changed her identity.
Read more here:
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SEATTLE! Do. Not. Miss. This. Saturday, Voices for Ukraine fundraiser benefitting
@UkraineTrustChn
with
@jkdpoetry
@ilya_poet
@returnstosender
@suvorovawrites
@bowlga
@OlgaLivshin
@kgnewberry
@RKranet
@katiefar
@OlenaJennings
#AWP23
#Ukraine
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Not that anyone cares, but the center of Donetsk where I spent every summer at my grandparents’ got shelled.
#Donbas
#UkraineRussiaWar
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My editor came to my
#awp
panel and took this photo. I’m talking about Totalitarian Trauma but somehow look like I’m talking about sunshine & lollypops. (Also that Clorox is sporting a Ukrainian color palette)
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Next week in SF, don’t miss this lineup with
@AKurkov
@kcengel
@evgeniyadame
@MLevantovskaya
@MashaDC
@VladaTeper
@bowlga
and poet Polina Barskova. At a Ukrainian-owned DecoDance Bar that donates proceeds.
#BABFPrologue
#BABF2023
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As a Jewish soldier in WWII, my grandpa survived against unspeakable odds. Afterward he never talked about the war or about being Jewish. It took me writing a novel about him to understand why. My essay for
@JewishBook
#HolocaustMemorialDay
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“Immediate and necessary” -
@NYurtsaba
’s review of Your Presence is Mandatory in
@worldlittoday
😭
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Just donated book proceeds from a
@Rotary
talk to
@UkraineTrustChn
who help evacuate people from Russia’s invasion. Did you know that $100 can save 30 lives? Please donate if you can!
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We should welcome refugees!
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Amazing to be read & reviewed with such care! The novel “despite its predominantly historical setting, is immediate and necessary”. Thank you Nikola and
@worldlittoday
My review of
@SashaVasilyuk
's YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY appears as a Breakout Review in the latest issue of
@worldlittoday
. Very humbled, as always, when such places find value in my work. Thank you, Sasha, for your novel & for standing with Ukraine.
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Woke up this morning to find my 6y old reading to his 3 y old sister. Now that is LOVE. Happy V Day, everyone! ❤️
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Talking Totalitarian Trauma in Seattle
@awpwriter
with
@kgnewberry
@AnnaFridlis
@jkdpoetry
and Anna Halberstadt. We represent the Baltics, Caucuses, Russia and Ukraine as well as poetry, journalism, memoir, and fiction.
#awp2023
#AWP23
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My grandparents both survived Holodomor as kids. Yet the Ukrainian famine was so hushed in the USSR that I didn’t learn that terrible word until the 1990s.
In memory of the millions of innocent Ukrainians who died during the Holodomor 90 years ago, today and every day we stand with Ukraine.
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80 years ago today, Kyiv was liberated from Hitler’s army. Afterward, my grandma along with thousands of students - mostly girls - worked after school to clear the rubble. Then, for decades, the saying was, “As long as there’s no war.”
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Both AWP panels accepted! See y’all in Kansas City for BBQ & words, words, words.
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Apparently if you type “when” into Google in Russian, the first search suggestion is “when will the war end”
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Last night, I fainted. First time ever. As EMTs were sticking things in me, I thought, At least my book is finished… For readers a book is a book. For writers, a book - especially their first - truly feels like a life achievement.
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Sometimes, you’re proud you wrote a book. Other times, that your 2 y old loves sledding at full speed ;)
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We’re bringing you readings on Ukraine, WWII, ghost grandmas, KGB, nostalgia & Moldovan escapades. Come hear from L.A.’s post-Soviet writers
@thesoviette
@katyaapekina
@InnaEffress
@YelenaFurman
@RKranet
@ruthmadievsky
#LosAngeles
#AuthorsOfTwitter
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First reviews are starting to come in! This one by
@NYurtsaba
in
@worldlittoday
is both smart and gorgeous. So so grateful!
#BookReviews
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“NO TO WAR!” This may be the biggest anti-war showing in Russia to date
#NavalnyFuneral
The tremendous amount of bravery it takes to do this in Russia in 2024 shouldn’t be lost on any of us
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So excited about our
@litcrawl
reading with post-Soviet authors
@bowlga
@VladaTeper
@TeaOnSundey
@MashaDC
. October 22 in SF. Immigration, war, identity. Bring Kleenex. Gonna be killer!
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L.A. peeps, on Jan. 20, come to Stories Books & Cafe for a reading by post-Soviet authors
@thesoviette
@katyaapekina
@InnaEffress
@YelenaFurman
@RKranet
@ruthmadievsky
and yours truly! RSVP on
#UkraineRussiaWar
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A whole box of books in my trunk!! I feel like a bank robber 🥸 / with
@AKurkov
@MashaDC
@BooksIncStores
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Today I became an Italian citizen! This journey began in my high school Italian class and involved twists like meeting my husband at Burning Man, moving to Europe and figuring out which country administers birth certificates of Soviet Crimea (it’s Ukraine) 🇮🇹
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✨ My 1st trade review!
@ALA_Booklist
says “Full of devastating pathos and elucidation of how war and, especially, fascist and communist mindsets destroy one’s humanity, this timely novel is a robust addition to the growing body of literature chronicling the Ukrainian experience.
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In Donetsk, Viber has been turned off (phones stopped working in Feb), so now locals only have Telegram for calls/msgs. Big water problems: trickling cold water in some hoods, none in center (a water truck makes deliveries). Constant bombardment. Liberation my ass.
#Donbas
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How heartening to read words on Russia’s war in Ukraine to a full audience, despite a new terrible war in the Middle East. With
@MLevantovskaya
@bowlga
@MashaDC
Margarita Meklina and Nina Rodenko. Thank you
@Litquake
for having us.
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