The warmth of the aftertaste of meetings, conversations and of course a good book was left after the II Zhytomyr Book Forum “Dieslovo”. For those readers of Zhytomyr.Travel who could not get on the meeting with Anastasiya Levkova, a writer, curator of the project “Private Urbanistics”, a deputy director of development at the Ukrainian Institute of Books, it is likely to be interesting to learn about a novel for teens “The senior pupil. Freshman “and reflections of the author about his youth here and now and in the early 2000s, small Ukrainian cities, provincialism and new opportunities for self-realization for youth

The novel “The senior pupil. Freshman”
“I wrote this book for teens, because it seemed to me that what I experienced in my 14-16 years may be interesting to them, will help me to reach some important conclusions that I have done for myself”

About the youth in the 2000s
“It seems to me that now it’s fashionable to write about the problem moments of youth, it is very good that such books are. Indeed, both the problem of divorce and the drug problem are relevant, but we can not say that all families are disintegrating or that all teens are dealing with drugs. Still, there are many and casual teenagers, and they must also have books about themselves. And even if there is a problem in the family, it was important for me to show a positive scenario ”

Literary norm
“In the early 2000s, our teens talked Russian, especially in the context of leisure. It was considered cool. The book has Russian-language dialogues – I did this to show what the language situation was. The youth jargon of those years was more, but I have replaced much of the literary norm ”

How do children get used to the amenities
“I think that the advantage of small cities is that many children here grow up faster, because they have to move away from their parents when they go to enter higher education to major cities. Of course, we have to endure a lot of things, we live in dormitories, we must somehow be able to distribute for the whole month the amount that your parents have allocated, but in this way you begin to share responsibility with your parents, plus you yourself manage your time, this motivates. If you grew up in a big city and in student years, and so was your parents, then your autonomy can be delayed for years, often parents do not want to let their children go, and children get used to amenities that they do not need to care about ”

Private Urbanism Project
“Urbanism is all about the city: both architecture and our behavior in it, because the urban person lives not like rural, it’s the way we spend working or free time, for example, visiting a coffee shop – purely urban practice, with what it has become more widespread in recent years. The project “Private Urbanistics”, which I am conducting (edited by the magazine “Week”, which Anastasiya Levkov is curious about), are blogs about Ukrainian cities, but they do not have a tourist orientation, there is no question of visiting a certain the city that is baiting there. Instead, they are blogs about how we feel the city, it can be about impression, it may be some kind of criticism, it can be a conversation about your hometown, about what you visited or know well. We have only one blog about Zhytomyr on the project, this is a blog by Julia Stakhivska writer »

My Zhytomyr
“As for Zhytomyr, I want to say that he is very close to me: I drive Svobody Square every month when I go to my parents to Khmelnitsky, but I have never left here till now and I could not walk through your city. However, I already have a strong emotional connection with Zhytomyr, because my friends-writers Julia Stakhivska and Volodymyr Danilenko tell me a lot about it. It is a connection, recognition through text, the texts of this project work the same way – they create a more intimate emotional connection between people and cities, about which other people tell them ”
PS: It is possible to join the project “Private Urbanistics” (http://tyzhden.ua/PrivateUrbanStudies) by sending texts to the address of the project urban@tyzhden.ua
Translated by Aliona Matushevich