Slavic mythology, poetry, and the creative life.
This is a space for the stories that linger. You’ll find Slavic myths retold, original poetry, book reviews, and honest writing about the creative life — the work behind the work, and the life behind the work. Old stories have always carried something we haven’t quite named yet. That’s why we keep returning to them.
Featured Article
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When I moved house in 2023, moving my home library was a special slice of hell. It took me six months to arrange my bookshelves the way I liked them and to finally feel comfortable and settled in my reading space. I used the upheaval as a reason to install…
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I read Land by Maggie O’Farrell a few weeks ago, and it took me time to understand how I felt about it and what I wanted to say. O’Farrell’s book is wide open, like the land itself. She takes a place, a windswept peninsula in the west of Ireland, puts…
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Slavic Mythology
Gods, spirits, and old tales
My Poetry
Poems for the moments that don’t fit
The Creative Life
On writing, making things, and building a creative career
Latest Articles
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Swing Time: Book Review
Each novel by Zadie Smith seems to be an independent stylistic experiment, from her initial omniscient narrators in the White Teeth (2000) and On Beauty…
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Sarajevo: What to Read on Your Way Home
Every day, one way or another, I end up being asked about my identity, which I need to express in the way that will be…
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On Memory: The Buried Giant
Since Jonathan Swift’s political satire Gulliver’s Travels, fantasy has often been used a means to an end, an imaginary stage with an unlikely cast of…
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What Lurks Beneath the Surface: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Dark nooks and crannies inhabited by ghouls, trolls, and hags, the monsters under the bed, the suspicious stranger in the street, the thing that creeps…
About Me
I’m Erna — writer, poet, devoted cat lady, and a marketer who came to it the strange way, through stories. Slavic mythology sits at the heart of this space, alongside original poetry, book reviews, and honest writing about the creative life.
Pull up a chair. There’s always something worth reading.
let’s connect
MY BOOKs
Beneath the Surface
Beneath the Surface is a poetry collection about the things we don’t say out loud — the secrets, the weaknesses, the quiet monsters of everyday life. Read more.
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New myths, new poems, new stories — whenever they’re ready.
