Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of the war, and grew up in England. She teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. She is married, with a grown-up daughter, and lives in Sheffield. Her debut novel is the highly acclaimed A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

This weblog was originally posted on www.encompassculture.com.

Thursday 26th October

Everyone said Helsinki was beautiful - and they are right. But they should have warned me about the weather.

It was pouring with rain and blowing a gale on Thursday evening when I washed up in the exhibition of Contemporary Ukrainian Artists, in the National Library opposite the Book Fair. They had heard I was in town, and wanted me to say a few words at the reception. Always game for a free glass of vodka, I agreed.

Half an hour late, and windswept and bedraggled, I ambled in a roomful of guests who had been told that I had failed to turn up. Full of apologies, I mumbled a short speech in my execrable Ukrainian, feeling suddenly self-conscious among strangers who welcomed me as though I was one of them. This Ukrainian identity thing - I still don't know how to handle it. I mean, I can cook varennki and I can sing Kalinka Moya, but what can I say to Ygor or Oksana about Park Primary School, Doncaster, or Gainsborough High School for Girls, which are just as essential a part of my cultural roots? It's almost a relief, an hour later, to return to my cocoon of Britishness at the British Council dinner, with fellow British writers, good food, good conversation, a comfortable hotel waiting for me. And yet meeting those Ukrainians has unsettled me, because as a Ukrainian, you're always an outsider trying to conceal the fact that you don't quite belong.

At this point I have a confession to make. I ate Rudolf. Yes, I chose carpaccio of reindeer from the menu. And then, to make things worse, I ate Bambi. An elk steak. Yes, it was nice. You see, if you're Ukrainian, you have to eat all the protein you can get.

Friday 27th October

The world is shrinking - what does this mean for 'national literatures'? I must admit, when I was first told I would be discussing this question, my hackles went up. What a lot of nonsense! Then I started to remember - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Austen, Dickens - I was made to read them at school, and I'm so glad I was. Maybe the idea of a national cannon of literature which everyone should read is not such a bad idea. But those writers - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Blake - wouldn't the idea of having 'national literature' appalled them? But then again ...…

Anyway, under the gentle and firm chairing of Catherine Lockerbie, and with the wise and sharp contribution of Iris Schwank, all those issues were successfully pulled together between 4 and 5 p.m., and then, demob-happy we were whisked off for another drink.

It makes it sound like one long jolly, but actually, it's such a pleasure to let one's hair down with other writers in a situation where no one is watching us, and being a writer is a job like any other.