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Episode 391: For the Atavist Magazine, Lily Hyde Takes Us to Ukraine
1.9k Plays1 year ago
In "Two Thousand Miles from Home," journalist Lily Hyde chronicles the unbelievable true story of three pregnant women torn apart by war.
Lily talks about how she hates every thing she writes, struggling with the invasiveness of journalism, and how she earned the truest of her central figures.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Struggles in Writing and Editing
00:00:01
Speaker
ACN efforts, it's the Atafistian time of the month. So, you know, some spoilers ahead, I think, in this garage jam session. I don't know. I mean, I'm never happy with what I write. So I would have, yeah, there would definitely be something I didn't like about it and thought I'd done wrong. And that's the main thing that I think maybe I did wrong.
00:00:31
Speaker
I see an effort to CNF the creative non-fiction podcast a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories and Brendan
00:00:42
Speaker
O'Mara. We've got Lily Hyde, born in the UK, living in Ukraine. She's a journalist and author of the novel Dreamland. And her piece for the activist is titled 2000 miles from home. As Russia invaded Ukraine, three women from the same family became pregnant at the same time. Then the war tore them apart.
00:01:07
Speaker
I dare you not to read it after reading that head and subhead. We dig into how she connected with Ukraine, how she got access to this family she writes about, the one regret she had about the writing of the piece, and the ethics of writing about people's lives when it feels like it's none of our fucking business.
00:01:28
Speaker
I feel this more and more day to day like, who the fuck am I to invade your life and write about it? And when I'm making decisions about what gets put into print or whatever, I feel ickier and ickier about being a journalist almost every day and want to disappear from the face
Advice for Young Editors
00:01:43
Speaker
of the earth. But before we hear from Lily, we hang out with Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece, to talk about some of the unique challenges this story presented.
00:01:54
Speaker
You know, like why bother wasting time anymore on the housekeeping bullshit? You know what I mean? You know what I mean. Here's Jonah. Riff.
00:02:16
Speaker
It was I think it was Rilke who you know he wrote something like you know letters to a young writer or something to that extent and you know a lot of times even on this podcast we're always like trying to give advice to or just you know pointers or little things to make writing better but I want to go like flip that on its head a little bit because you know you're on the editor side of the table and like if you had to write something of like letters to a young editor
00:02:46
Speaker
What might you say to a young editor just to work on that side of the craft? It's tough because there are a couple of ways to answer that. I feel like the thing that's giving me pause is that I think it's very rare for editors to be in a position where they have a ton of time to actually edit because of the state of the business these days.
00:03:15
Speaker
So that makes it more difficult because the short answer is just spend time with the story and sort of move through it as slowly as you can or as you need to. Printing stories out, which I don't do a ton anymore, but printing stories out is a nice way of slowing down. I think I've talked before on this podcast about
00:03:45
Speaker
Alex Hurd's advice, he's an editor outside now. And he always, when I was having trouble with a story, he would have me sit down and just write like one sentence summaries of each section to show, see how a story is unfolding, what flows to the next thing and making sure that there's sort of a logic and a natural progression to the way a story is,
The Role of Dialogue and Trust in Editing
00:04:12
Speaker
structured. The thing that it took me a while to figure out was that I needed to just trust my gut, which doesn't mean that I always know the answer. But I'm, at this point, at least an experienced reader, if not a good reader. And if something is not working,
00:04:35
Speaker
or if I feel like something isn't working or that we're moving too fast or too slow here, that's probably right. And I think young, or at least when I was a young editor, I was working with far more experienced writers and I was worried. They're like, oh God, they're gonna think I'm stupid or that I don't know what I'm doing, which of course, like that happens, you know, like it's fine. There's nothing to worry about. But I sort of pulled my punches, so to speak,
00:05:04
Speaker
because I wanted to just kind of like keep the writer happy and tell them they were doing a great job. And that's not always in service of the story. Certainly tell writers when you think something is really working, they love to hear that. But just listening to my own gut tell me this is right, this isn't. And then opening a conversation with the writer to figure out why it isn't working.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, I think, the key part. But as you've mentioned before, given that editors are just flooded with so much stuff, they can barely do more than copy edit half the time. So there's often no time to have those conversations. But that's where you're in the fortunate position of often having a lot of runway between publication.
00:05:53
Speaker
and drafting of pieces where you can have that dialogue with people, where you might even be able to say, how about you experiment with this, try it on for size. If not, we can go into the back room and get you a new pair of shoes. It's like, try this on, see what works. And then we'll work, it's that dialogue that you always talk about.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the strategy I had when I was at outside and found myself with less and less time to devote to features. I mean, the deal I kind of had to make with myself was that short pieces, I was going to be a copy editor for them. You know, I was going to try to like
00:06:32
Speaker
especially the online stuff, news stories, smaller service pieces. You want it to be a functional story. You don't want creators to be lost in it. But beyond that. The narrative arc of this review of ski boots, I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, exactly. You just had to deal with that stuff as quickly as you can. And then you try to carve out the space
00:07:01
Speaker
to still give those features sort of the attention that they deserve and spend a little bit more time on
Emotional Impact of War Stories
00:07:11
Speaker
them. And I think that's why, I mean, you hear book editors talk about this, like they don't edit at work. They edit at home or on the train or whatever works for them, but it's outside of normal business hours. And I think for
00:07:25
Speaker
magazine editors today, you probably have to think about doing stuff like that. And there are times even with my much more relaxed publishing schedule where I'm still aware that a day will be particularly busy with kind of admin type stuff and I need to
00:07:44
Speaker
wake up early to give an hour to the story or do it just before I go to bed. Just like finding that little space to be able to edit the story when you're not thinking like, okay, I have a meeting in 15 minutes, I'm just gonna get through like one section of this. That's where a story, the editing process starts to suffer a little bit.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so now with Lilly's piece that takes place in Ukraine during this war, it's an riveting piece and it's just wild on its surface of just what these central figures are going through and bringing into this world. So maybe talk a little bit about just what struck you about this piece.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this was a story that as soon as I read the pitch, I wanted to work on it. It was just a really powerful human story that is set in this incredibly important geopolitical moment or setting. And
00:08:59
Speaker
you know, it's rare to sort of have both of those things in a pitch that we get. And so I wanted to work on it, yeah, just right away and be involved in it, because it felt really important and really powerful. And Lily is just like a, she's a knockout writer, you know, she's really good, she really cares, she's got a lot of experience in this part of the world.
00:09:27
Speaker
and is really attentive to words and sentences and structure and all of that. So it was really, it was a really good experience for me, you know, because I don't, I went from like working at outside to working at the Atavist. And so I edit, you know, what I think of as like kind of like normal features, but I don't do a ton of
00:09:54
Speaker
like newsy features and certainly like very little war editing of any story about war, geopolitics. So there were things I learned in the process. I was sort of editing it for pace and trying
Exploring Resilience in Ukraine
00:10:12
Speaker
to keep the story moving. And one of the more frequent
00:10:16
Speaker
notes Lilly would send me was like, hey, I want this paragraph in because it shows how sort of disorienting the life is in the middle of this conflict. And, you know, that's not
00:10:35
Speaker
something I necessarily always have to think about in other stories. It was a good lesson for me and like, okay, we can tell the story faster, but maybe it's good to slow down in certain moments and really let some of that like nuance and complexity really sink in for readers.
00:10:58
Speaker
And what struck me about the piece too that I wanted to ask you about is given that there are young, there are babies that are brought into this conflict across generations and family and borders, and you're a dad of young kids, and I wanted to kind of get your sense of how this piece resonated with you given that you're the father of two young kids.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's heartbreaking, man. I mean, there have been multiple times editing this story where I've just kind of like sat back and had a good like five second cry, you know, because
00:11:39
Speaker
I mean, this is the power of storytelling, right? You arouse empathy in the reader and you get them to imagine. You want to tell it in such a vivid and descriptive way that you get them in that space.
00:11:55
Speaker
I don't think that's necessarily impossible for me to imagine quite what it's like to be in the situation they're in, but the glimpse of it that I can summon is terrifying.
00:12:11
Speaker
I'm in awe of their strength and their resilience, their ability to still function and love and be devoted parents and children because I have a hard enough time when we have like
00:12:30
Speaker
a bunch of appointments and kind of a chaotic day, you know, I get all kinds of grumpy. But here are these families faced with much more catastrophic potential consequences, still finding a way to sort of, you know, to love each other and that it's really kind of heartbreaking and powerful.
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, and what you said a moment ago about arousing empathy in the reader, I think that's a really good way of, not categorizing, but as a writer myself, sometimes I wonder, what's the utility in probing into people's private lives and telling these stories, which seems like for mainly the gain of the writer and their own prestige and their own career, and doesn't it seem,
00:13:24
Speaker
I don't know just it doesn't seem rude to be probing in that way but that's kind of what journalism and narrative journalism and stories of this nature do they illuminate things and I think you said it very well in that you know when these stories are done well with the right degree of focus they they arouse empathy and shine lights into corners that otherwise might not get them and maybe that's a way to get out of your own head when you feel like what business do I have to be probing into these people's lives
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I mean, it's something I've wrestled with kind of throughout my journalistic career. Yeah. It's a little voyeuristic. It sometimes feels exploitative. And you try
00:14:17
Speaker
You know, you try, if it's blatantly that, you know, you should take a look at whether or not it's a story you want to tell. But I hope, and I think this story is a perfect example of this, you know, like you were saying, you tell it because it's going to help people understand something in a deeper and more profound way. And you hope that that results in, like,
00:14:42
Speaker
I don't know, maybe it's too grand to say a better citizenry, but you hope that your readers are processing this and walking away changed for the better in some way. I think you've got to hope for that as a journalist, otherwise it is just exploited.
00:15:05
Speaker
But I think when it's done well, and I think Lily's story is an example of this, it's more powerful because it is true, because you're seeing the real life consequences of a series of decisions or actions. And that even in remarkable pieces of fiction,
00:15:29
Speaker
They don't have that same emotional power, but I feel like it's missing something that true stories have still.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, you know, as a kind of like, you know, wind down here, but about her piece, what I get, I get the sense, too, and this doesn't happen too frequently. At least what I've read with various out of his stories over the last few years, it's like it ends, but it doesn't feel like an ending.
00:16:01
Speaker
You know, because at the very not to give too much away at the point, I always do a spoiler alert thing. It's just like it ends with, you know, with the with the young man, like basically enlisting. And like, so it's going to go on. It carries on. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. This is one of those stories where like the ending it's not it's not tidy.
00:16:26
Speaker
you know, and it can't be because of just kind of the war is ongoing, you know, these people's lives are ongoing. But it's a lot of stories I edit and I'm just kind of like, oh, okay, you know, like, this is a solid story. And this was one where like,
00:16:45
Speaker
You keep reading news about Ukraine and this town where much of the story takes place was bombed recently. And while we were in the production cycle for this story, like the hotel where Lilly had stayed at was hit. And I've worried about Maxim and Lara, the characters who had
00:17:15
Speaker
move to that town and it's, you're right, it's very much an ongoing story. It's kind of like the end of a chapter, but there's still, you know, these people are still in it, they're still living it, which is a, maybe it gives the story more power, maybe it makes it more important, I don't know, but it certainly gives me kind of an uneasy feeling to know that it's,
00:17:45
Speaker
You know, we've just told one part of their story and they have this whole thing ahead of them. Well, awesome. Jonah, this is great as always. So thanks for carving out the time to kind of tease out this piece and dig into some of the nitty gritty of what it means to be on your side of the table. Yeah, my pleasure.
Lily Hyde's Work and Influence
00:18:04
Speaker
Always really fun to catch up and talk about stories.
00:18:16
Speaker
Alright, now Lily is practically and enviably, mind you, invisible online. Like she's a ghost. The tag of her email is lilyhide.com and that doesn't work. You type that in and it says, this page isn't working. Lilyhide.com is currently unable to handle this request and I love her for it.
00:18:40
Speaker
But, like all of us, she has an antiquated LinkedIn page. Gotcha! And it says, Author, journalist, editor and researcher specializing in Ukraine and Crimea. She's worked in and written about the fields of human rights, public health, particularly HIV, AIDS, migration and climate change. Her book, Dreamland, published by Walker in 2008, endorsed by Amnesty International.
00:19:04
Speaker
is the only existing novel about the return of the Crimean Tatars to their homeland in the 1990s. I like that she's a ghost. And I think I want to be a ghost too. Here's Lily.
00:19:24
Speaker
Very nice. And yeah, so, you know, I understand that, you know, you've actually you've written a couple novels, you know, one is Dreamland, you know, one girl struggle to to find her true home. And I and I wonder where the inspiration for that came from. So Dreamland, it's actually it's a novel, but it's very, very closely based on real events. And it's about the Crimean Tatars.
00:19:52
Speaker
who are the indigenous people from Crimea and their entire ethnic group was deported in 1944 on Stalin's orders. The excuse was that they'd collaborated with the Nazis on the German occupation and they were not allowed to return home for 50 years. They eventually came home when the Soviet Union collapsed.
00:20:19
Speaker
And it's a retelling about a family that come back in the 1990s. So it tells a whole story of their deportation and what led up to that Second World War and about coming back. So this was just after Ukraine had become independent. So coming back to this completely new country and rebuilding their lives from scratch. I was actually commissioned to write it, publisher Walker, they were
00:20:47
Speaker
producing this series of novels which were endorsed by Amnesty International. So they had to have some kind of sort of human rights element. And I've done quite a lot of journalism about the Crimean Tatars and found it this really amazing story, which at that time really nobody knew about. And so when the editor at Walker suggested with
00:21:13
Speaker
asked me if I would like to write something for this series. I was like, aha, finally I can write about the Crimean Tatars. So that's how that happened. All right. Do you find yourself more drawn to writing fiction or nonfiction? Good question. That's something I'm really
00:21:36
Speaker
really, really thinking about at the moment, as I think a lot of people are, a lot of writers, a lot of journalists, the world seems so hard to put into fiction in a way. I think we're very concerned with authenticity now, it seems to me, with who is entitled to speak on a particular subject, whether we can trust that person, whether we can trust journalism, whether we can trust photography,
00:22:06
Speaker
and it seems to me there's a kind of distrust of literature and whether it can really tell us anything or whether it's just irrelevant to real life or a kind of division between you read fiction to escape and you read non-fiction to engage with what's really happening. It seems to me that these are kind of debates which are really
00:22:33
Speaker
very current at the moment. Sorry, that was a bit of a long digression. No, no, I love that. And you know, you bring up a really good point about like trusting journalism and trusting photography. And I was thinking about this just the this past weekend. It was just on TV.
Trust and Authenticity in Media
00:22:50
Speaker
And I think the new a new Google phone is touting that like it's just like you take a picture and there's just one picture of a guy
00:23:00
Speaker
he's throwing his baby up in the air, and you know, he's throwing up like a foot in the air, like you normally would. But when they edit, on the commercial, they edit this picture and they put the baby like five feet in the air, and it looks natural, and their advertising is like, look at this, you can just embellish this photograph, but it's a total fallacy. And it's like, okay, well that's something you can do in the palm of your hand,
00:23:27
Speaker
But what if that is in the hands of, I don't know, bad actors who want to fudge things or maybe clean things up in a way that scrubs out the reality of what's going on? It's pretty dangerous what's going out there and how do you trust anything that you're seeing anymore?
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, artificial intelligence, as I think it's absolutely terrifying from those terms. I mean, I think bad actors is one whole incredibly important issue, but just generally the fact that actually anybody can manipulate anything now. You learn the language of whichever AI system you're using and you can get it to draw whatever you want and it looks really convincing.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, all right, how do you navigate that now? And even in the writing that I'm doing and even, let's just say even in podcasting or whatever, it's like I start to think now like, well, you know, if I have to do it in such a way, like if it sounds like AI could do it, then I have to push myself into
00:24:38
Speaker
Not like more extreme, but I have to be like be as individualistic as possible and I wonder if you know Maybe you're starting to metabolize it in that way too like if AI could do this then I need to push myself into more creative Liberties and even creative risks in the work you do Yeah, I was talking to my brother about this. He's a composer Talking to him about this couple of days ago. We were saying exactly this that
00:25:09
Speaker
maybe people are going to start much more valuing things which are obviously homemade or obviously individual, so less polished, more kind of like, I don't know, punk zines or something, you know. We're going to turn our backs on, especially in photography, we're going to turn our backs on this really glossy aesthetic kind of photography, which I think is way overdue. I mean, when I look at war photography now, I hate it.
Hyde's Journey into Ukrainian Stories
00:25:38
Speaker
there's this aesthetic of war photography, you know, this really saturated gray color. And it just makes everything look fake to me. And on your LinkedIn profile, you know, it says, author, journalist, editor and researcher specializing in Ukraine, Crimea and the former Soviet Union. So I have to ask how you got involved in that area of study?
00:26:02
Speaker
Well, first of all, I'm a bit horrified you looked at my LinkedIn profile because I haven't updated it for about the last five years. You're very hard to find online. Like, I couldn't find much. No, no, I don't really like having an online presence. And yes, I would change that for my Soviet Union for a start, because I think these days to lump those countries together into something they were 30 years ago is not really correct.
00:26:31
Speaker
But I got into it completely by accident. I wanted to live abroad and travel abroad. I went to the Czech Republic and got a job teaching English. And it just happened that my students were Ukrainians. And honestly speaking, I never even heard of Ukraine before. I mean, this was in the 90s, so I guess I have kind of an excuse.
00:26:54
Speaker
And they got me interested in Ukraine. I was offered a job in Ukraine. And yeah, I got a job contract for I think it was six weeks. And that was 20 years ago. Tell us how you arrived at this story and found the people who are central to this story. I found them. It was sort of by accident.
00:27:25
Speaker
So the family come from this village of Idkadov, which is very close to the Russian border in East Ukraine, which was occupied when the war started, when the Russian invasion started in 2022. And it was liberated in autumn. And at the end of last year, I was travelling with a health project of mobile clinics.
00:27:55
Speaker
So these vans which were going to frontline territories and liberated territories to bring health care to these places because nothing was working, no hospitals, no clinics, no doctors, no pharmacies, nothing. So we were travelling to these villages with a small team of doctors and nurses and also bringing some humanitarian aid. And I was just talking to people in this village, which could help.
00:28:22
Speaker
morning we went the kindergarten had been bombed and hit and everybody was yeah somewhat upset about that but they told me that there was not just one but two newborn babies in this village where there was no electricity no gas no water no nothing and I was just how and then it turned out these two babies were in the same family but two generations of the same family and then it turned out that
00:28:51
Speaker
the younger couple with this baby had actually had to do this gigantic journey all the way through Russia to get back and they'd come back like a week before I arrived. And I met Maxine the young father on that first visit and yeah it just seems to me such an amazing story and then I actually went back a few weeks later and met the family the rest of the family.
00:29:16
Speaker
And then I had this story and was thinking, what on earth do I do with this? It's way too big for a, you know, just a usual feature. Um, and so I sort of sat on it for a couple of months thinking, how on earth do I tell this and do it justice? Um, and then, yeah, I started pitching it around and I'm really, really happy that Atavius took it because I really don't know where else I could have published such a, well, what seems to me as such a big and complex story.
00:29:46
Speaker
And it was great to have the space to get into the whole sort of complications of what it's like living under occupation, how you can get out from this situation and the sort of complexities of what turned out to be the complexities in this family with the third baby and the mother who turned out to be
00:30:14
Speaker
I don't want to say pre-Russian. But anyway, there was conflict within the family as well about what side they were on in the war. And trust is always hard to, it's always one of the central challenges for any any journalist, especially telling stories that are super intimate in nature.
Building Trust with Story Subjects
00:30:31
Speaker
So for you, how did you ingratiate and earn the trust of your central figures? I mean, I think I was just really fortunate that there are
00:30:43
Speaker
they were very open to talking to me. I mean, the fact that I met them in that village, I think made a big difference. It's not a place where many journalists were going. And I don't know, I just, I mean, I really, I hope that I really managed to build up a good relationship, especially with Lida, one of the mothers. And I don't know, maybe it helped that I've
00:31:12
Speaker
lived in Ukraine for a long time. So maybe I have a good understanding of what life's like in Ukraine, maybe. But yeah, I think mostly I was just very fortunate. I'm very grateful to them that they were willing to put up with my endless questions and meetings with them.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, the endless question thing is always the challenge. When I'm talking to people just about the innocuous things that I write about, it's like, eventually, I can almost feel their eyes glazing over. Oftentimes, I'm talking on the phone, it's just like, I'm sorry, these questions sound really inane, but they really help with building detail. But I applaud your patience, thank you.
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, I was also really lucky with this family that they're, they're so the way they retell their story is so vivid and so detailed, actually a lot of the time without me having to ask. I mean, I usually try not to direct an interview, I prefer to let people talk and tell me what they want to tell me. And that way, a lot of things come up, which I would never even thought about to ask. And, you know, it's
00:32:26
Speaker
I don't like having a preconceived idea of what the story is up to them. It's their story, it's not mine. Yeah, they really had such a vivid way of retelling it. And it's actually one of the things I regret about the way I wrote it in the end is that I didn't put very many direct quotes in from the three main people. And I did that on purpose because I felt like
00:32:55
Speaker
you know, when you're always kind of pulling the reader back, as in, this person told it to me, the journalist, you know. And there's also quite a lot of dialogue in the story, which is reported from what they told me, but with other people. Does that make sense? It does. But why do you regret not putting things in quotes as much? Because I feel like their voices were lost a bit.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, the way they told their own story was so vivid and I think maybe that a bit of that was lost in the final telling. And maybe it was the wrong decision to decide not to put in more direct quotes.
00:33:38
Speaker
I read beautifully and I know Jonah said it was just like a joy to read it because it was written written so well and I think a conversation you guys might have had where I think it might have been about quotes and you're like well almost just about everything is quoted from them it's just not in quotations it's just you know you almost kind of channeled it for them you know in this piece if I'm understanding that right.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, we did have that conversation and it's certainly what I was trying to do. Yeah. But sometimes I wonder if I kind of ironed it out or it ended up getting ironed out a bit too much. I don't know. I mean, I'm never happy with what I write. So I would have, yeah, there would definitely be something I didn't like about it and thought I'd done wrong. And that's the main thing that I think maybe I did, Rob.
00:34:33
Speaker
How do you work through that, not being happy with what you write? It's something that I think a lot of us wrestle with. For you, it's just how do you get it done when you know you're going to be infinitely displeased by everything you put down? Yeah, I think pretty much all writers suffer from it. Good question. I don't know.
00:34:58
Speaker
put it aside and move on to the next thing and accept that you're never going to be completely happy. A piece like this, working with an editor as well, and so we've always got a second opinion, which helps. Can you ever go back and read something of your past work? Yes. If a long enough period has gone by,
00:35:25
Speaker
quite often go, if I go back, I'm often quite pleasantly surprised about actually how it's not that bad. Like, like the book Dreamlander actually wrote that more than 10 years ago. And I went back to it quite recently, because there was something, there's something in there that I want to refer to in my new back, new book. And I was reading it, actually, this is actually quite good. So that was, that was nice.
00:35:53
Speaker
the ending to me struck me as like it wasn't as clear clear cut because it's very clear that the story continues you know for Maxine you know just as you wrestled with the ending you know what were you know you thinking as you were constructing this ending I've been working on it over six months so when I first met them as I told you they'd only just arrived home after this gigantic journey
Challenges in Story Endings and Reflections
00:36:22
Speaker
And I actually thought the end would be when they got the birth certificate for the baby for David, which seemed to me sort of an ending for him. You know, they'd made sure that he was going to live in Ukraine and then they made sure that he was a Ukrainian citizen. And then Zhenya died, Yevgen, the
00:36:51
Speaker
volunteer you'd helped both me and Maxime and his family and I met Maxime at his funeral and I thought okay maybe that's the end and then it was just the years as I wrote the final interview when I met Maxime and
00:37:09
Speaker
family and he told me that he was going to join the army and I was like okay well I guess that I mean as you said I very much hope it's not the end in a way it is yeah a whole new chapter but that seemed to me the place to stop because it sort of makes so much sense why do people go to fight there's still a war going on in a way this story is much happier than a lot of stories from Ukraine now because everybody
00:37:39
Speaker
Well, pretty much everybody stays alive. But there is still a war going on. There is still occupation and invasion. And so for someone to choose to go and fight is sort of inevitable.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah. And in talking with Jonah, he he mentioned of this, you know, this one sentence towards the end where where you write, you know, he was going to protect his family, even if that meant he had to leave them. And I think there was something of a dialogue between the two of you about how you were going to phrase that sentence and everything. So maybe you can kind of talk about that a little. Yes, we really we did have a lot of discussion about that sentence in Jonah's objection to that sentence was
00:38:23
Speaker
that of course nobody can know what's going to happen. And going away to fight in the army, you can do it for that reason, because you want to protect your country, you want to protect your family, but what's actually going to happen is unpredictable, which I totally take his point. But I wanted something much stronger than that. It's not a decision that anybody takes lightly.
00:38:49
Speaker
And I wanted to make it clear how much determination has to go into this decision. So to say you're going to do something is much stronger than saying, you know, you want to do something. Uh, but also for me, it does actually have two meanings. Say he's going to protect his family. You can read it as in he's going to because like, as in he absolutely intends to, but it also implies in itself is going away. He's going away to protect his family. You know, there is this horrible irony as well.
00:39:19
Speaker
that in choosing to protect its family, he's actually gonna be leaving them. Yeah, there's one sentence where you write, you know, when there's a long deafening roar outside that makes the windows tremble or a series of more distant thumps, I'm the only one who flinches. And I love that in a sense, because it just shows how accustomed some people are to just the normality of
00:39:46
Speaker
Shit, bombs blowing up nearby are very close or far away, and it's just like, even though you've been there for several years, you still flinch, but they're just, they don't. You're the one who flinches and they don't. Yeah, it's just terrible what human beings can get used to.
00:40:13
Speaker
It's like the only way people can survive without going crazy, but it's also just absolutely terrible. I mean, another big discussion we had with Jonah about the end was this question about why Maxime and Lyra came back with the baby, why they didn't stay in Europe. It's also a part at the end where I asked them.
00:40:39
Speaker
the way I'd originally written it, I'd put it more in as in I think the reason why they came back. And then we actually changed that in the end. But this question of what people can get used to and why they can continue living in these situations, it's something which as a journalist here, you just can't get away from. You go to these frontline villages where, yeah, there's nothing, no gas, no water.
00:41:06
Speaker
uh, shelling every day, no work. Um, why are people still there? And I've just realized it's after years of going to these places that it's a completely pointless question. I mean, you just get an answer like somebody has to feed the pigs or, you know, where else would I go? Nobody wants me. Becomes almost an insult, I think, to even ask people. But this is,
00:41:35
Speaker
There's all sorts of different reasons for it. But partly, I think it is, of course, that people just get used to, get used to what's happening. And you could say that about the country, that Ukraine has now pretty much got used to the fact that there's a war going on and nobody knows when it's going to end and the world, you know, everybody was interested in Ukraine for a while and now they're all looking at Israel and Palestine and soon it's going to be the next war somewhere else.
Media's Role in Global Support for Ukraine
00:42:00
Speaker
And it just, we just get used to it.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. As someone who is right, you know, I mean, you are there on the ground, you know, in the in these villages. And, you know, what dismays you when you look outward at, say, maybe the more mainstream coverage of what you might read versus what you're experiencing and what the people around you are experiencing, like, you know, day to day? I mean, what really dismays me now is how
00:42:34
Speaker
Everybody's forgotten about Ukraine. I mean, I understand that it's inevitable, but it's still, yeah, it's dismaying because Ukraine needs international support in this war. And if it loses it, then it's going to be a disaster. But in general, I think media coverage has been good for Ukraine. It's been really good.
00:43:02
Speaker
Since the invasion started, before then, not so much. This war started in 2014. And I know that journalists who are based here, including myself, who feel like we've just been fighting this battle since 2014 to get the world to notice that there is actually a war going on, that Crimea was annexed and occupied, that East Ukraine was occupied.
00:43:31
Speaker
It wasn't the Civil War, it was Russia. And so in a way, it was a sort of huge relief that the rest of the world woke up to this fact, at least in 2022. Yeah, what are the nature of the conversations you have with fellow foreign correspondents there in Ukraine?
00:43:54
Speaker
Well, we don't have many conversations these days because we're all so busy, to be honest. Well, yeah, I'd say, yeah, the relief that now people know what we're talking about. We don't have to explain every time where Donbass is, where Crimea is, who the Crimean titles are, or whatever.
00:44:21
Speaker
But there's definitely a lot of dismay, I would say, at the moment, at just seeing this attention completely switch somewhere else. And I mean, we used to, the war in East Ukraine, it started being called Europe's Forgotten War, and around 2016, that became the way to describe it, you know. And I just noticed of
00:44:50
Speaker
Another journalist who's based here, he did a story a couple of days ago and he had to introduce it as something like the war the rest of the world is forgetting about. I mean, he hated it, but it was like, there's always has to be a phrase, you know, to describe something.
00:45:10
Speaker
Well, I think what's good about your story also is that it coming out, you know, now it kind of refreshes the leaves, so to speak, that this conflict, this war is very much ongoing. And, you know, you're really, you know, you're showing what it's like for
00:45:30
Speaker
for the people that are just living through it. You know, it's a story that really illustrates the, you know, just that day to day, but also, you know, it's this crazy thing about the birth of these babies, which is, you know, insane on top
Normalcy and Ethical Concerns in War Storytelling
00:45:45
Speaker
of that. But you're really showing the, what it's like to live, live in it. And I think that'll, I think that'll really resonate. I don't know. I imagine that was part of your goal too, is just like, here's, you know, the, you know, this family being put through this crucible.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yes, it was. Thank you. I'm glad that that came across. I just really wanted to not just tell the bare bones of invasion, occupation, liberation, but convey what it's really like to live through all of this and all the surreal stuff about how normal life carries on at the same time. You still dig your garden, you still
00:46:30
Speaker
and talk to your family on the phone in the midst of all this horror of you know people still get pregnant, people still have babies and yeah I really wanted to get that across so glad that worked.
00:46:44
Speaker
As a journalist, and I was talking to Jonah about this, and I talk to this sometimes with other people too, about doing really intimate stories of this nature, at times it can feel, and this is just maybe me and maybe you can speak to this, sometimes telling these stories can feel sometimes exploitative of people, and for the benefit of the writer, the prestige of the writer.
00:47:13
Speaker
And that's always something I'm thinking about. Like, what right do I have to do this? Maybe I should just write fiction and just don't... just kind of like not tread on people's stories. And I wonder if just for you doing nonfiction and stories like this, if you ever wrestle with those kind of, you know, feelings. Absolutely, yes. All the time.
00:47:42
Speaker
Yes, I always try to make it clear that people understand that I'm a journalist and I want to write this story. And I try to, as I said before, not to force a shape on the story.
00:48:09
Speaker
to let the people tell me what they want to tell me. And I very, very much hope that I didn't traumatise them too much in sort of asking them to go through the very difficult things that happened to them. But yeah, it's an issue for sure.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah, because when you're thinking about it, it's like, you know, in reading, you know, True Crime or anything or just a harrowing story and you realize that, you know, as the writer, when you're able to metabolize that information and then, you know, use those devices of
00:48:47
Speaker
I don't know, of things to keep people reading, which is, you know, some cliffhanger-y type things, a little bit of suspense. And you realize you're using these literary devices overlaid over, like, real people's trauma and real people's experiences. I'm like, oh my God, I feel kind of...
00:49:02
Speaker
I feel really icky trying to tell the story in a way that makes the reader want to keep scrolling or turn the page. But at the end, I'm like, God, this is still real people. And I feel like I'm using them. And I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. I think some of that goes back to that question you asked about whether it's fiction or nonfiction. In a way, fiction feels more ethical.
00:49:30
Speaker
but in a way it feels even less ethical when you're writing fiction about real events because then you're really employing all of these devices to talk about war or Holocaust or whatever. There's this, I've been reading Chesav Milosh, a Polish writer and poet, and he writes something about this, about how it's,
00:49:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's immoral to write fiction about something like, well, he's talking specifically about the occupation of Warsaw, because you're trying to make something beautiful and formed and artificial out of such horrific events in a way like to have something which is badly written, but true is a more ethical approach.
00:50:23
Speaker
But on the other hand, would anybody read it if it was badly written? So I don't know. Yeah. God damn. Lily, why do we do this? Well, because it's interesting. And it's, I don't know. I mean, when I was young and naive and went into journalism, I had this strange idea that it would, you know, change the world, which clearly isn't true.
00:50:51
Speaker
But I think you do get seized by a story, right? You get seized by something which feels to you so amazing and actually important that it's... I mean, like this family, the story of the family from the Atavist story. Before I even knew that I was going to try and write it up somewhere, I just told everybody about it because I just thought it was such an amazing story. And that's what people do, right?
00:51:19
Speaker
Even if they're not writers, they still tell stories all the time. They tell each other stories.
00:51:24
Speaker
Well, Lily, I want to be mindful of your time. You're at the end of your day. I'm at the start of mine. So I want to let you be able to power down as best you can. As I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I always ask the guests for a recommendation of some kind. And that can just be anything for the listeners out there, you know, something that you're excited about, that you think that maybe you can enrich someone's life with something that you're enjoying, be it a book or a brand of socks or a brand of coffee. It's totally up to you, Lily.
00:51:54
Speaker
Well, I mentioned I've been reading Chesav Milosh, and I would really recommend this book, The Captive Mind, which is, it's about writers and totalitarianism. Specifically, it's about writers living under the Soviet regime in Poland after World War II. But it's where the comment I mentioned comes from, the one about whether it's not immoral to write fiction.
00:52:22
Speaker
about horrific historical events. But I'm finding it really fascinating and also a real kind of lesson in how to write narrative non-fiction, some of it. So I would really, really recommend The Captive Mind.
00:52:40
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Lily, I'm so glad that you went down the writer path, became a journalist, and so we could write read the, you know, the amazing stuff you're coming up with, especially with this, this piece that you did for the activist. It's an incredible piece. So I just thank you so much for the work you're doing and for coming on the pod. Well, thank you for inviting me. It was great to talk.
00:53:07
Speaker
Alright, thank you very much CNFers for making it this far. Thank you to Jonah and Lily for the time. I don't have a parting shot today because, like, who cares, really? It doesn't matter. Nothing I say matters. We're all just molecules, man. You know, my goal for heading into this week was to be more positive because I have a tendency to shoot myself in the foot and be my own worst enemy. And it made me more negative.
00:53:33
Speaker
Then I thought about this moment in The Last Dance on Michael Jordan where someone brings up something, like a negative thing, and he's like, why focus on that? Why focus on that? Let's focus on the positive. And I'm like, how do you do that when life is meaningless and we're all going to die anyway? So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.