Vitaly Kirkpatrick

I write memoir the way I lived it: plainly, and without asking permission to tell the truth. My first book, The Misadventures of a Ukrainian Orphan, is the story of growing up in an orphanage in Chernivtsi and starting over in a country that didn't owe me anything. My next book, Green Card, Gold Ring, picks up where that one ends — immigration paperwork on one table, a wedding ring on the other, and a legal system that took its time catching up to what I already knew.

I don't write trauma for its own sake. If a scene is in the book, it's because it's true and it moved something — not because it's shocking. That's the only editorial rule I hold to.

Outside the page, I also write and teach analytical science — a different kind of precision, same handwriting.