Julia Lukshina's short story "Water" now available in the Fall / Winter issue of Epiphany!

Julia’s short story “Water” was so much fun to translate. Meet philologist Yelena Dmitriyevna and her informant Baba Nyura:

“A rooster interrupted Yelena Dmitriyevna’s thoughts. The tatters of morning fog in the courtyard turned into a delicate veil suspended in the air. The rooster was sauntering along the fence, yelling his head off. Baba Nyura was sitting on the packed- earth bench along the side of the hut, her face turned to the sun. Parched wrinkles enveloped her watering eyes.

If there was no hotel in the village, and there almost never was, the village administration would send the visiting philologists to live with locals. Yelena Dmitriyevna always asked to be placed with an informant. That’s how she’d ended up with Baba Nyura.

Baba Nyura was eighty- seven. Like many old village women, she did all the weeding, digging, and wood- chopping herself. Her daughter Olga lived in Vologda, but, as they said when they talked about her in Teryayevo, she was a “flutter-by,” always running off somewhere, after some new job or new suitor. She hadn’t been to see her mother for seven years now. True, she did send money sometimes. Nyura had told her all this one evening after a shot of moonshine.”

It was a real pleasure working with Operations Director Miracle Jones and Editor-in-Chief Rachel Lyon, whose editing was simply beautiful. Thank you both!