Amazing night at Sami Rohr Ceremony

Last month, I traveled to New York to receive the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The ceremony was held at a stunning venue and I met the three Rohr children who instituted this prize in honor of their father, the famous Rabbi David Wolpe, the three finalists, and a lot of supporters of Jewish literature.

I was quite nervous about my speech, but it helped to have my husband and a few of my girlfriends in the audience. Apparently my husband teared up while I spoke, which was only the second time he’d ever teared up (the first was when he saw our first-born). If you’re curious, you can watch the speech and the ceremony here.

Sasha Vasilyuk accepts the award from George Rohr

I’m beyond grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime experience and the generosity of the Rohr family!

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What I’m Reading

Fiction: Boy from the North Country by Sam Sussman is an autofictional novel about a son who returns to care for his dying mother and discovers the story of her turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whose son he may or may not be. I met Sam at my Sami Rohr event in New York and highly recommend you pick up this novel.

Nonfiction: Chesnok by Polina Chesnakova is a gorgeous new cookbook featuring perfected recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

On my nightstand: Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond about a Jewish-Ukrainian grandfather/Chicago gangster, Tell Me Yours I’ll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten is a short story collection perfect for the spooky season.

I hope you’re enjoying the Fall season, wherever you may be.

xx Sasha

Holy moly! I won California Book Award & Sami Rohr Prize

I’m beyond excited to announce that I’m the winner of not just one, but two incredibly prestigious awards. How that happened I honestly don’t know. I’m not being facetious. There are certain things that I expected from publishing my novel, some of which happened and some of which didn’t. But these two awards weren’t something I expected. Which makes it all the more rewarding.

First off, Your Presence Is Mandatory won the California Book Award for First Fiction! Given that this book takes place very far from California and the huge number of amazing books that come out from California authors, I was really surprised and hugely honored. This is the 94th year of the awards and is organized by the Commonwealth Club. The winner for Fiction category (not first, but general) is Percival Everett for James, with the silver medal going to Rachel Kushner for Creation Lake, both tremendous novels.

Please join me for the virtual ceremony on Monday, June 23 6-7pm PST.

On the same week, I found out that I’m the winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature! This annual prize, given on alternate years to fiction and nonfiction works, came as an even bigger shock because there is no nomination process for this award, so I didn’t even know I was in consideration. The ceremony was supposed to be in Jerusalem in early July, but obviously everything got rearranged, so now the ceremony will take place in New York on September 3 (more details to come).

I’m tremendously grateful to judges - all deep lovers of books - for appreciating and recognizing what I tried to do with my book. I feel like it gave Your Presence added literary legitimacy and I hope this recognition will lead to more readers discovering this book.

What I’m Reading

Fiction: Endling by Maria Reva is a novel I’ve long looked forward to reading. It’s an absurdist story of three Ukrainian women, a snail, and a truck full of foreign bachelors. Reva was working on it before the full-scale invasion began and it altered the book in incredibly interesting ways. Don’t miss it.

Nonfiction: Our Dear Friends in Moscow by Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan, a couple of exiled Russian journalists who track how their friends fell into working for Putin propaganda machine.

On my nightstand: The Night Sparrow by Shelly Sanders (we’re doing an event together in SF on July 17) about a female sniper in the Red Army.

I hope you’re taking occasional breaks from the world’s craziness. My heart goes out to friends & their loved ones in Ukraine, Israel and Iran.

Reflections on Publishing & Ukraine on Book's 1st Birthday

I woke up today ready to celebrate the 1st birthday of my book, but when I checked the news, I saw that while I slept, there was a horrible Russian bombardment of Ukraine. And it just reminded me of how, when I began writing the book in 2017, then when I found a publisher in 2022, and then when my book came out in 2024, each time I kept hoping that peace was near… And yet, here we are.

Sorry to be a downer, but I think it’s easy to look away from a war that’s far away and that’s been going on for so long. The problem is that it won’t disappear just because we don’t look.

And now, to the original, less somber part of my post:

Your Presence Is Mandatory came out in April 2024 and as I reflect on the past year, I realize how much it’s given me. I did 50 events, gave a ton of interviews explaining complex historical and geopolitical issues, and met hundreds of readers, many of whom shared the stories of silence in their own families. I also just learned that I’m a finalist for the California Book Award. All in all, this has been an incredibly humbling experience.

In a way, I’m ready to move on to next projects. But I’m not sure the book is quite done with me yet. And maybe that’s the point. After all, books are supposed to outlive us. In November, my publisher will release the paperback edition and I might do more things around that. I just hope - once again - that by then, peace in Ukraine will be either reality or an actual possibility, and that authoritarian tendencies sweeping our country won’t reach their full force.

Publications

• I interviewed author Boris Fishman about The Unwanted, his latest novel about a family fleeing an unnamed country ravaged by war for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Fishman was the second Soviet-born American writer I’ve read (the first was Gary Shteyngart), so I was very curious to ask him about how writing changes throughout an author’s career as well as about his own refugee experience as part of the late-1980s USSR-Vienna-Italy path that so many friends of mine took as kids.

• I wrote an op-ed for Time Magazine called “80 Years Later, Both Trump and Putin Brand WWII a Victory”

Upcoming events

If you’re in the Bay Area in May, I’d like to invite you to a few awesome literary events. There are a lot to choose from and - best of all - they all feature interesting writers and not just me :)

• Jewish Arts & Bookfest | Sunday, May 4 @ 1PM | Berkeley. I’ll be on a panel with Olga Zilberbourg, Margarita Meklina, Tatyana Sundeyeva talking about growing up on a diet of Russian lit.

• Talk with Jon Hickey on “Big Chief” | Wed, May 14 @ 6:30PM | Mill Valley Library. I’ll talk to Jon about his gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family and belonging, set on a reservation.

• Sebastopol Litcrawl | Sat, May 17 @2PM | Travel through time with a few of my favorite local authors: Lee Kravetz, Michael David Lukas, Joy Lanzendorfer and Kirsten Menger-Anderson.

• Bay Area Book Fest | June 1 @ 11:15 | Berkeley. “Fiction Debuts Navigating Historical Memory” is the panel I’ll be on along with Sam Sax, Rickey Fayne, and Betty Shamieh.

What I’m reading:

Fiction: The Unwanted by Boris Fishman about a family is running away from an unnamed country ravaged by civil war. Big Chief by Jon Hickey, a political thriller set on a reservation.

Nonfiction: Refugees are clearly on my mind because I’m checking out journalist Jeanne Carstensen’s A Greek Tragedy about the 2015 shipwreck off the Greek coast as well as Displaced by journalist Valery Panyushkin about civilians affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Next reads: Jacqueline Doyle’s flash chapbook The Missing Girl; Alka Joshi’s brand new Six Days in Bombay; and Endling by Maria Reva (forthcoming in June)

Hope you’re well despite it all!

xoxo Sasha

2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors

2025 is going to be a big year for English-language books written by Soviet-born emigre authors. From poetry to fiction, journalism to cookbooks, here is the list of FSU books published in 2025. For more details on these books, check out my full blog post on Punctured Lines.

Simon Shuster, THE SHOWMAN | nonfiction in paperback | HarperCollins | January

The Showman gives an insider’s perspective on the war in Ukraine based on one journalist’s unprecedented access to Volodymyr Zelensky and his cabinet.

Yaroslav Trofimov, NO COUNTRY FOR LOVE | novel | Abacus | February

Romantic historical fiction about a Jewish Ukrainian woman surviving in Stalinist Ukraine.

Julia Alekseyeva, ANTIFASCISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE | nonfiction | University of California Press | February

A study of international leftist documentary art of the 1960s as a weapon of resistance to fascism.

Julia Kolchinsky, PARALLAX | poetry | University of Arkansas Press | March

A lyrical narrative of parenting a neurodiverse child under the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Luisa Muradyan, I MAKE JOKES WHEN I’M DEVASTATED | poetry | SMU Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press | March

Make Jokes When I’m Devastated evokes love, grief, hope and longing across generations, continents, and devastation in Ukraine.

Inna Krasnoper, DIS TANZ | poetry | Veliz | March

This poetry collection problematizes the gaps between languages, but also looks for points of contact, and the means for becoming proximate.

Boris Fishman, THE UNWANTED | novel | HarperCollins | March 25

A novel about a young girl and her parents fleeing an unnamed civil war and the brutal dictatorship that has targeted their family.

Katya Apekina, MOTHER DOLL | novel in paperback | Overlook Press | March

An intricately constructed nesting doll of a novel about four generations of mothers and daughters and the inherited trauma cast by the Russian Revolution.

Alina Adams, GO ON PRETENDING | novel | History Through Fiction | May 1

Three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava.

Maria Reva, ENDLING | novel | Penguin Random House | June 3

An absurdist debut novel about a biologist in Ukraine battling to save the country’s snail species from the brink of extinction.

Gary Shteyngart, VERA, OR FAITH | novel | Penguin Random House | July 8

A bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter Vera.

Mikhail Iossel, SENTENCE | fiction | University of Toronto Press | August

Sentence is a remarkable juggling act between genres and countries, memory and imagination, past and present-a celebration of linguistic freedom and virtuosity.

Polina Chesnakova, CHESNOK: COOKING FROM MY CORNER OF THE SOVIET DIASPORA | cookbook | Hardie Grant | September

A cookbook and a memoir, Chesnakova takes us on a journey through time and taste, giving a new life to recipes familiar to those of us who grew up in Soviet kitchens.

Kristina Ten, TELL ME YOURS, I’LL TELL YOU MINE | short story collection | Stillhouse Press | October

A fantastical, genre-crossing collection exploring the darker side of games and childlore in which immigrants, women, and queer people confront the horrors of living in a society hell-bent on controlling every aspect of their identities.

Sasha Vasilyuk, YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY | novel in paperback | Bloomsbury | Fall 2025

Last but not least, I’m excited for the paperback edition of my historical fiction novel to come out in the Fall with a fresh new cover, inspired by the snowy French edition.