Please join Kyiv, Ukraine-based author Larissa Babij in conversation with UVM professor Adrian Ivakhiv at the Richmond Free Library on Tuesday, May 28th at 6:00 pm, where Larissa will present her newly published book, A Kind of Refugee: The Story of an American Who Refused to Leave Ukraine.

American-born Larissa Babij was at home in Kyiv when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. A Kind of Refugee chronicles the first year of all-out war in Ukraine through vivid dispatches that Babij sent to readers abroad in 2022. It is a personal story of coming to terms with her own inherited past as the grandchild of Ukrainian WWII refugees while responding to Russia's assault on her home and discovering the significance of taking care of your country together with your compatriots. A Kind of Refugee is both a testimony to Ukraine's indefatigable spirit and a message to Americans to take responsibility for their power to shape the war's outcome.

Larissa Babij is a Ukrainian-American writer, translator, and dancer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2005. Her ongoing dispatches from Ukraine and links to other published writing and translations can be found here:
https://akindofrefugee2022.substack.com/.

Adrian Ivakhiv is Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture at the University of Vermont and the author or editor of several books on environment, culture, media, and identity. He is currently completing an anthology called Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth. From this summer he will hold the J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

Books will be on sale at the event and are also available for purchase online: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-kind-of-refugee/9783838218984

"Larissa Babij's vital dispatches from Ukraine humanize people subject to the dehumanizing conditions of war. At times meditative, at others sharp as shrapnel, Babij's testimonies slice through the fog of this ongoing war, making the existential stakes of this battle for Ukraine clear as day." ~Maria Sonevytsky, Professor of Anthropology and Music, Bard College

Event Info

Sep 30, 2024, 5 to 6:30 PM

Sep 30, 2024, 5:30 to 6:30 PM

Oct 5, 2024, 5 to 10 PM