A LITTLE ABOUT MYSELF

I do not like writing my own biography. Attempting to dryly and briefly recount one's life is no easy task when that life has been packed with events—both joyful and tragic. It was full of mistakes, disappointments, and victories. And yet, look at that: this entire personal drama called "life" must be dissected and dried, presenting the dead facts of vanished years for public display.

Therefore, I will say only one thing: read my novels and novellas. They are not autobiographical narratives, of course, but from them you can learn a great deal about me. If my novels prove not to be enough, you can simply imagine the rest. There is an undeniable advantage to this approach: in each reader’s imagination, I will be different.

I began writing seriously in early 2000. I have kept diaries continuously since my adolescence, but I finished my first major novel, The Awakening—the first book of the trilogy The Woman Who Wished to Love—in 2006. This novel was translated into Greek and was a roaring success, remaining on Greece’s bestseller lists for two years. It tells the story of a Ukrainian woman, Yelizaveta Galich: her upbringing, her worldview, her event-filled life, her trials and adventures. The narrative begins in the depths of the Soviet Empire and ends in the first book with the year 2000. The second book, Forgiveness Without Mercy, has already been written, spanning the timeframe from 2000 to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Currently, I am working on the third book, which describes the events unfolding from the beginning of 2014.

Another novel of mine, The Monster of St. Petersburg, was also translated and published in Greece. I began writing this novel before the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War, specifically for a Russian audience. Somehow, I managed to foresee the events of the subsequent decade. I wanted to scream to the Russian people not to let their brains and souls completely perish, not to succumb to aggressive and stupid propaganda, to rid themselves of their imperial delusions, and not to save the world, but to save themselves. The Monster of St. Petersburg is an allegorical work. Despite her youth, the main character—an unformed yet already doomed soul—dies at the end of the novel. Just as the soul and thought have died in Putin’s Russia today…

In between large works, when time permits, I write novellas and short stories, such as The Autumn Garden and The Unneeded Woman. An entertainment for the mind and an attempt to comprehend eternal themes. Such as life and death, for instance.

Among my works, you will also find two military-political Diaries, which very accurately describe the events of 2014 and 2015, when Russia occupied part of Eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea, as well as a short historical excursion into the history of Ukraine from 1917 to 1920, when Ukraine declared itself an independent Republic but failed to defend its independence.

I write all my works under the pseudonym Kat Graff. Why? I will answer with words from my own novel: “…a woman has no name. She comes into this world with her father’s name and, throughout her life, takes the names of men who become—or never become—part of her flesh and blood. At the end of her life path, a woman counts in her baggage two, three, or four names, none of which belong to her. If she takes it into her head to become famous, she will inevitably make famous the name of a man—either her father or her husband.” That is why I took a pseudonym.

And, if we are talking strictly about the facts, I was born in Izmail on the Danube River, graduated from secondary school in Baku, entered the Faculty of Romano-Germanic Philology at Kyiv State University, graduated with honors, gave birth to a son, worked at various jobs and in various places. I have been married twice and have lived in Greece for many years now. It has become my second home simply because here they translate, publish, and read my books.