I’ve decided to share the stories I’ve been writing.
Since October, I’ve completed some pieces exploring what happens when people move between cultures, languages, and identities. These stories are about the small moments that reveal who we are when nobody from home is watching. About finding connection in unexpected places. About the performance of adapting whilst trying to remain yourself.
I’m drawing from my own experience living between Moscow, Beijing, and London. Each story stands alone, but they share common threads: translation (literal and metaphorical), digital communication, the immigrant experience, the gap between who we are and who we become in different spaces.
This feels vulnerable. I’ve worked in marketing, studied business, done nails for celebrities. But writing fiction feels like the truest way to process what I’ve observed about identity and performance across cultures.
Over the next few months, I’ll post these stories here. The first one, “The Name on Pinyin” about a Russian student in Beijing, appeared in October. Three more will follow.
Posted from London, where the ocean breeze hasn’t quite left my thoughts.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
