Irena Karpa: “If fear arises, I always go and do what causes it”

Irena Karpa is one of Ukraine’s most celebrated contemporary authors and singers. She has authored a number of books over her career, including the novels Freud Would Cry, Good Tidings from the Aral Sea, and Just Don’t Tell Anyone About it. Her work has been translated into Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, Russian, and English. Her words have appeared in English in Vanity Fair, Fictionable, and PEN/Opp.

During a recent visit by writer and musician Iryna Karpa to Kyiv, journalist Olena Lysenko had the chance to meet her at the Sense bookstore-café, located in the heart of the capital. there, on the second floor, away from the noise, they discussed the writer’s creative work, her music career, cultural diplomacy, and her writing masterclasses.

Olena Lysenko: The novel Time Shelter by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov was released this year in Ukrainian translation. In 2023, it won the Booker Prize. In the novel, the author reflects on the idea that if Europeans could return to the past, each country would choose a particularly turbulent decade of its 20th-century history. Which decade of your life would you like to return to? The 90s, the early 2000s, the 2010s, or are you comfortable now?

Irena Karpa: I’m comfortable now. But if I had to go back, I would choose the 2000s because it was a very interesting transitional period. It was a time when I was still a student and my adult life was just beginning.

Would you change anything in your life?

I would have approached many things differently; I wouldn't have stressed so much when I moved to Indonesia at 22. I would have enjoyed our concerts and our music more, which ultimately gained a cult following, even though it wasn't shown on TV or played on the radio. It was unconventional because it wasn’t mainstream Ukrainian pop, but something Western, alternative, and deliberately unfashionable. Now, after all these years, I realize that this is exactly the reason why the music doesn’t age.

I would write my books differently now. Back then, I thought everything I wrote was so great—"Let's publish it!" Now, I wouldn't release books with such ease. I would edit and agonize over them more.

If I could change something, I would try to get more pleasure out of life, although I did get a lot of pleasure back then. It's just that in youth, we are all prone to suffering, asking ourselves many existential questions, searching for something within ourselves, digging deep. It's normal—this is how artistic works, books, and songs are born. It's just that sometimes now I regret not understanding certain things back then and not being able to feel some symbolic moments. Sometimes I meet people my age or younger, and they tell me that they read my books under their desks at school, secretly listened to my music, and thank me for them. But back then, I didn’t understand the value of it. It would have been nice if I had noticed that at the time.

Right now, in Ukrainian culture, the 1990s are a trend, sometimes reaching the point of madness. We have films about the 90s, books about the 90s, even ordinary memories and conversations—everything is about it. You belong to the generation that was shaped during that time, you grew up then, met people, and saw what was happening in Ukraine during the early years of Independence. What was this period like in our national and your personal history?

I clearly remember the 1990s, along with the band Tanok na Maidani Kongo and the writer Serhiy Zhadan. These figures, 5–10 years older than me, experienced their youth during that era while I was still a child. Back then, I didn’t personally know these iconic individuals. At the time, my role models were bandits and racketeers. I was still very young, but I saw all of this and absorbed it like a sponge.

But you lived in Halychyna—in Yaremche, to be precise. What kind of bandits were there?

The same type as everywhere back then—boys in Fords or Opels, enforcers, and shaved-head bandits. It was a kind of romance of the era. Looking back on it now, it all seems quite amusing. Those bandits who didn’t end up dead or in prison are now active in politics or business. People from the 90s are easy to spot: show me your face, and I’ll tell you what you were up to back then.

I wrote two books about the 90s period—From Dew, Water, and the Swamp and Good and Evil. These are my short childhood stories. They are both funny and sad at the same time because I describe my teenage years spent in western Ukraine in Yaremche and a bit at my grandmother’s in Cherkasy, in the central part of Ukraine. People at that time really had to survive, sometimes not even having enough to eat. I remember, my father went all the way to China to resell things in Ukraine. Both of my parents traveled to Yugoslavia, bringing food there, and bringing back equipment, while in Poland, they imported almost everything. When I was little, I also sold deodorants and tights at the trolleybus stop in Cherkasy next to grandmothers who were selling sunflower seeds. But customers bargained with me so much that I ended up selling everything at cost price. My mom took away the deodorants and tights from me and said that I would never become a businesswoman. A lot of the 90s I recognized in the film by Ukrainian director and writer Iryna Tsilyk, Rock, Paper, Grenade.

This is a film about childhood in Cherkasy in the 1990s. Did you like it?

I really resonated with the film because I know what Cherkasy was like back then and the dramas that could unfold over a pair of sneakers. I was at the screening with a friend who is five years younger than me and had a very traumatic and poor childhood. She nearly had a panic attack after watching the film.

The experience of the 90s in Ukraine can evoke different reactions. Many people lost their jobs at that time, and food was distributed through ration coupons. Clothes were also hard to come by. We wore the same black leggings and synthetic skirts with elastic bands in acid colors on top. There was also recycling: my mom would sometimes make me a jacket or pants from my dad’s old jeans.

It was an interesting and creative time in a certain sense. My parents were "resourceful" and worked a lot, so we always had food. My dad was a forester, and for 200 dollars in the 90s, he could buy land from an entire village or make some “deals,” but he didn’t want to. In our family, stealing was not accepted.

What was the culture like in the 90s? Was it about music, books for you? What did you read at that time?

I read everything. In my childhood, I still managed to read French, English, and American classics. I especially loved detective stories by James Hadley Chase. Then came adolescence, when you’re interested in boys and not books. However, I had a very good musical foundation from childhood. My parents studied in Germany and were very cosmopolitan. At home, I listened to vinyl records with music by Bob Marley, Scorpions, Dire Straits, and Deep Purple. We deliberately didn’t listen to Russian music, not just because we didn’t like it.

Why did you end up in Yaremche?

My father had a job there; he was a forester. My parents grew up in cities, so I didn’t even have a grandmother in the village, like most children in Ukraine. I would travel from the small town of Yaremche to the regional center, Cherkasy—it felt funny.

I lived in Cherkasy until I was three years-old, and every time I came to the city from Yaremche, I started speaking Russian with the other children. Thanks to my dad, I became fully Ukrainian-speaking at 11. He called me out to the balcony in Cherkasy and told me to stop "switching" between two languages. If my friends wanted to, they could switch to Ukrainian—if not, they didn’t have to. But I had to speak only in Ukrainian. I promised my dad, went outside, and made a tremendous effort. It was very hard for me—they laughed at me and devalued the Ukrainian language. But I held my ground and didn’t give in to the Russian-speaking crowd.

At 11-12, two important things happened in my life: I stopped speaking Russian, and I stopped being overweight. I got into sports, started eating less, and changed literally over one summer.

Did your parents know about the bullying?

No, it’s a problem in children’s circles. You don’t tell your parents, you just endure it. They hate on you because you're fat and speak Ukrainian. But if everything had been easy for me as a child, I wouldn’t have tried to fight back, and I would have become nothing. So, these challenges shaped my character and determined my fate.

When did you first become an artist creating stories or music?

I started creating stories back in kindergarten. My first "texts" appeared as fictional adventure stories that I told to other children in preschool. It was something between storytelling, stand-up, and public performances. The caretakers at the kindergarten would ask my grandmother not to pick me up too early because I knew how to hold the attention of my listeners, and the caretakers could take care of their own things during that time.

Were you not afraid of public speaking?

It felt very natural. Actually, all children are creative at first, until someone tells them "you’ll embarrass yourself," or "why are you doing this?" Parents or teachers often suppress, judge, or overpower a young child. But children need to be allowed to express themselves and try. I was lucky because I had this kind of support from the caretakers.

Later, when I learned to write, I began transferring these stories to paper. At 15, I wrote my own series, where the characters were my classmates. They would read these texts under the desks in class and were very happy when they became characters in my stories. My best friends were the main characters, while those I didn’t like appeared only in episodes.

My mom had a real typewriter, and I would spend hours typing my texts on it, some of which were about my first sexual fantasies. My mom didn’t pay attention to what I was writing; she was more concerned with whether my physics homework was done. Around this time, I also started composing hip-hop songs.

When did you enter the cultural scene?

My entry into literature was accidental and very connected to music. When I entered university to study French philology, it was more of a compromise. I knew I could drop out if I decided to dedicate myself to music. At the time, I was drawn to the alternative scene—rock music, not pop—the latter of which demanded the perfect blonde image, like Britney Spears. I identified more with artists like PJ Harvey or Björk.

Through my musical connections, my text reached Yurii Izdryk, the editor of the iconic magazine Chetver (published from 1990–1997 and 1999–2008). A friend of mine, Alik Mikh (Oleh Hnatyv), the producer of the band Faktychno Samy,sent him my piece titled "Bilyavchyk." Izdryk wrote in emails at that time: "Who is Irena????" Then he published the text, and that became my entry into the world of literature.

Chetver was a platform for young authors, and from there also came Sofia Andrukhovych, Lyubko Deresh, and Svitlana Povalyaieva. This publication was my ticket into the world of literature. Later, I wrote for the magazines Ekstrem and Moloko under the pseudonym Soya Los—a nod to Sonya Los from Vsevolod Nestayko's Adventures in the Forest School and my then-vegetarian lifestyle. At the time, I had a column about sex.

Eventually, I published my first book, Znes Palenoho (The Remains of the Burned). As it turned out, it was funded by a friend I was hopelessly in love with—likely he did it out of guilt.

When did you first meet Izdryk? And why did you choose to write about him for your Master's thesis, "Manifestations of the Archetype of the Great Mother in Michel Houellebecq's Elementary Particles and Yurii Izdryk's Double Leon"?

For me, Izdryk is a super-guru and simply the Leonard Cohen of Ukrainian poetry. I can’t remember our first meeting, but it was probably at a Chetver event.

We became closer when I was writing my Master's thesis. That required frequent and deep conversations, and that's when our friendship began. For me, Izdryk was not just a writer but someone whose prose I loved for its rich, dense texture. His ability to turn life experiences into literary masterpieces was inspiring.

What especially impressed me was how, at the age of 50, he started writing poetry. This shattered the stereotype that poetry should belong only to the young. His example shows that maturity can add depth that young authors often lack. This idea became the foundation of my work with adult students in creative writing courses—I am convinced that you can start writing at any age. The key is to read a lot and develop the ability to observe life.

When I read newspaper headlines from the 2000s, they describe you as extravagant, rebellious, provocative, and outspoken. Were you not scared at that time to be like this?

I’m rarely scared. Maybe it’s some sort of pathology, but if fear appears, I always go ahead and do the thing that causes it. This became a principle for me, which I even formulated into a slogan with my friend: "Fear and do it."

Of course, there are rational fears: for example, it's not wise to run in front of a car or leave the house during shelling. But sometimes I tend to lean towards risk. For example, in the mountains, when everyone says conditions are bad, but one brave person insists, "It’s fine, I’ve been there," I trust that voice and go ahead. That’s how, a year ago, I nearly died in the mountains. That was real fear, requiring effort and endurance, and I dealt with it. Other fears are usually just anxiety or negative curiosity: what will happen if I write the truth? I might receive negative reactions from my loved ones, but at the same time, that very drive is what pushes me forward. So, usually, I follow it, because that's the only way to overcome the boundaries of my inner world.

How did your parents feel about your early works?

At first, they tried to convince me that such topics and texts were shameful. Then they came to terms with it, and they even liked some of my works, especially those that dealt with childhood stories and funny memories. But once, after publishing a book in which a math teacher was mentioned, her daughter threatened me with a lawsuit and even promised to "curse me." But if someone has done something and hasn’t hidden it, then I have the right to write about it.

How did the literary community react to your works? Were there negative reviews, and what did they mean for you? Did they encourage you to write more, or did they make you doubt your texts and taste?

I’ve had negative reviews, but usually from people whose opinions don’t matter to me at all. The most important feedback comes from authorities, like Izdryk, who supported me. His opinion is worth more than hundreds of swampy dogs.

However, constructive criticism is worth listening to. For example, asking a beta reader where attention fades or the text becomes boring, and deciding what can be cut. But sometimes, criticism can be pointless, like remarks about sex scenes that supposedly no longer shock anyone. Writing about sex is a personal choice of the author, as it is part of life, not a tool for provocation.

The author is not obligated to please everyone. With so many books and authors, everyone is bound to find something that resonates with them. A book that seems wonderful to one person might not appeal to another—and that's perfectly natural. The main thing is to express your opinion ethically, even if it’s negative.

For me, the most important thing is that the text avoids meaningless reflections, such as self-absorption, plot digressions, or musings that don't contribute to the development of the story. A good story can be simple, something a grandmother might tell at the market or a neighbor in a train compartment. However, its advantage lies in the details, depth, and the right balance between the manner of delivery and content.

Looking back, what’s the boldest thing you’ve done in your life? Is there something you wouldn’t dare do now?

I definitely wouldn’t dare get on stage with a band I’m not performing with. But that’s exactly how my musical career with the band Faktychno Samy started during their performance in Ternopil. The band was playing their long industrial tracks, and the local tough crowd in the audience was throwing plastic bottles at them. The musicians, introverts by nature, calmly continued playing, but the situation was tense.

I decided to intervene: I jumped on stage uninvited, grabbed the microphone, and started singing their lyrics. I was shaking so energetically that everyone thought I was on drugs. But it got attention, the performance came alive, and a real show emerged. Later, I began playing with the band, and it changed its name to Qarpa.

How much space, in percentage, does literature and music occupy in your life?

I prefer to work with music more. Books, in my case, have always been more of a commercial venture than music. Literature is something where everything depends solely on me: I sit down and write. On the other hand, music requires a whole logistics setup, and I’m not a very organized person. But I really want to return to musical creativity. When I was 30, the songs of our band Qarpa seemed naive and adolescent to me, I was even embarrassed to sing them. Now, at 40, they seem like post-irony. I go on stage and joke: if my lyrics seem silly to you, that’s post-irony. I’m an authority and can call things however I want.

As Oksana Zabuzhko said, between 40 and 50 is the best time for a woman: you still look good, but you have enough wisdom to know what suits you and what doesn’t. It’s a very good state. Youth often gets confused: at 27 or 30, there’s social pressure, like if you don’t have children or a husband, and then it becomes easier and more interesting.

There’s a lot of humor and self-irony in your books — it's one of their strongest features. How has humor changed over these three years of full-scale war? Have any topics become untouchable? Something that, conditionally, would have been taboo two years ago?

I’ve never had any taboos when it comes to humor. However, I would never joke about the victims of violence, and I do not support sexism or victim-blaming. That’s unacceptable for me. Humor always remains somewhat incorrect and absurd. For example, it’s possible to joke about sex, age, or appearance—that’s part of comedy culture. But humor should never mock human suffering.

In this context, it’s interesting to compare how humor is viewed in other countries. For example, the French often joke about even tragic events, as they did after terrorist attacks. At the same time, I am convinced that where there is violence or serious injustice, it’s not right to joke. That’s a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed.

You’re fluent in both French and English. Was there ever a temptation to switch to another language and write books in it? After all, this opens up new opportunities.

I most enjoy writing in Ukrainian because it brings me true pleasure. While I can write in French or English, it’s not the same. I don’t feel the same ease to play with words or joke in French. Writing in English is more enjoyable, but it still doesn’t replace Ukrainian. There are excellent translators who can adapt texts into other languages for a wider audience, but I have no desire to change my primary language of creativity.

I once saw that you wrote a poem in English.

That’s the only poem I consider normal. It came after I translated Rupi Kaur—her poetry "bit" me. In my youth, I wrote poems in Ukrainian, but they were embarrassing.

The poem I read at a poetry festival in India really resonated with people. They even planned to invite me to some festival as a poet. I was surprised: a poet with one poem? It showed that I could write poetry, and who knows, maybe by the time I’m 50, I’ll start writing poems like Izdryk.

Every country has its stereotypes. France is known for the Eiffel Tower, red berets, and croissants. The French, too, have their own perceptions of Ukrainians. In your books, you often tell the stories of Ukrainian women who come to Paris, many of whom face judgment and misunderstanding. What stereotypes about Ukrainians exist in France? And with so many Ukrainian refugees in Europe now, are these perceptions starting to change?

I haven’t analyzed stereotypes too much, but there are certain things I’ve noticed. Even those Ukrainian women who worked as nannies or cleaners before the war usually had higher education. The French themselves note that Ukrainians are hardworking, but they forget that these people might be highly qualified specialists, forced to seek low-skilled work due to life circumstances.

My acquaintances who moved to France have already adapted: they’ve had their diplomas recognized, learned the language, and are working in their fields. Some are freelancing or working remotely for Ukrainian companies. From what’s said in the media, many people are impressed by Ukrainian culture and bravery. But I also see some of our people standing in line for social assistance speaking Russian, and it's unpleasant.

In an interview, you mentioned that in Ukraine, France, and India, the book How to Marry as Many Times as You Want is received equally well by women. Has women's attitude towards marriage changed recently? And what about your own?

I never wanted to get married, but I ended up married three times. It seems to me that there’s still pressure in society on girls who aren’t married yet. I tried not to succumb to these norms, but at 27, I got married, thinking that it’s better to get divorced in a year than to have the label of "unmarried." And that’s exactly what happened.

Over time, I realized that the less you think about marriage, the more a man wants you. You need to focus on your own development rather than waiting for someone to "take" you in marriage. However, even today, even successful, self-sufficient women face pressure from their families, society, and stereotypes.

I also think that people are really drawn to energy and ease. Even if you’re 70 years old, it will still be pleasant and healthy to be with you, because there are often those who love to "pick apart" your brain. That’s what makes people run from marriage.

Let’s touch on literary workshops and therapeutic writing. Do you ever fear that the more you read and help others write their texts, the less time, opportunity, and resources you have for your own work?

Therapeutic writing for trauma survivors originated during the start of the full-scale war in 2022, and I began leading workshops after my departure from my embassy work in 2019. It became a way to earn money, do my job, and help others. It’s a balance between creativity and financial stability.

My work helps others through therapeutic writing. Right now, I’m developing a course for teenagers to help them manage their emotions during the war.

Have you ever read your students’ works and become so overwhelmed by them that you no longer have the strength for your own creativity and then you start doing something else?

When I become overloaded with these texts, I go wash the dishes, cook, or read another book by a different author. I know how to sort out my tasks, so I enjoy reading my students’ works. It’s difficult, but it’s rewarding when their book is published. Doing something honestly takes a lot of energy, but it gives satisfaction.

You often participate in TV broadcasts in France. How has the perception of Ukrainians changed? Do they know enough about Ukraine now to draw conclusions? Do we still need to keep talking about ourselves?

I know what television is like and how to work with it. I’m a professional, and I always keep my composure: where emotions are necessary, I show them, and where they aren’t, I hold back. I know how to work in front of the camera.

The French have a strong appreciation for facts. When they see F-16s in the sky or witness their weapon systems in action, it convinces them. At the start of the full-scale war, I frequently spoke about seizing the money of Russian oligarchs living in Monaco or along the Côte d’Azur. Initially, it seemed like a distant dream, but recently, France allocated 300 million euros in aid to Ukraine from confiscated Russian assets. This demonstrates that sometimes what once seemed unattainable can eventually become a reality.

If I can influence even one viewer, that already means something. I know I don’t have direct influence on the government, but my role is to influence people through my story. My presence and the emphasis I sometimes put on important moments allow me to be more effective than local experts.

The French see the vast Russia on the map and tiny Ukraine, and they respect us for our resistance. Ukrainians remain a symbol of courage for the French.