It was a six degrees of separation kind of day yesterday. I had lunch with Robin Baird Lewis, Brantford born and raised like me, and a book person. She’s the illustrator of the iconic picture book Red is Best, written by Kathy Stinson.
Robin was in town for a few days and emailed to see if we could get together. She had something for me: a book by another fellow book person, Valentina Gal, author of Philipovna a novel/memoir of the Holodomor, which is the same topic as my latest novel, Winterkill. Robin and Valentina are in the same knitting group!
I read Philipovna and LOVED it. I was thrilled to get a hard copy of the book from the author herself as I only had the e-edition, and it is such a powerful book. But also, I wanted to share with her, through Robin, another connection that we had, that both of our books had been discussed in Mateusz Świetlicki‘s groundbreaking work on Ukrainian Canadian historical literature for young people. I brought the book to our lunch to show Robin, and will be sending snaps of the pertinent pages so that Robin can read them to Valentina. How nifty is that?