Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan (best ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📕

finally, the glinting sword tip of the Motherland statue lose their lustre and sink into shadow.

Acknowledgements

I am hugely indebted to many friends, colleagues, students and fellow writers.

My thanks to the Hyde Writers, whose early enthusiasm gave me the confidence to continue. I owe particular thanks to Richard Stillman and Paul Davies. Thanks also to the St James Taverners – I came late but you didn’t mind. It is a privilege to share work with such fine novelists and poets.

I am eternally grateful to Carole Burns and to Claire Fuller for reading entire drafts, for constant encouragement and for pointing out the things I could not see. Thanks to Paul Ayling and Ruth Cruickshank, to Anne Booth and Virginia Moffatt and many other kind and brilliant friends.

My creative writing colleagues at the University of Winchester are the best – all of them. Thanks Julian Stannard, Nick Joseph, Mick Jardine, Stephen Thompson, Vanessa Harbour, Judy Waite, Mark Rutter, Glenn Fosbraey and Kass Boucher for wine and irreverent writing talk. Special thanks must go to Andrew Melrose and Amanda Boulter for their steadfast support via the Doctor of Creative Arts programme.

Without Paul Anderson, who has generously read the manuscript and made suggestions, I would never have travelled to Kiev. Heather Griffiths dug out her copy of Tim Burford’s Hiking Guide to Poland & Ukraine and recalled sights I had nearly forgotten. Thank you both. My thanks also to Irina Oxley and to Floradarya Rustamova who helped with some Russian vocabulary. Any errors are mine alone.

My most particular thanks go to wonderful Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery at Salt and of course to Linda Bennett, my visionary editor. Linda not only took me on as a Salt author, she supplied me with Sour Cherry Patches at the exact moment I needed them.

Final thanks and huge love to my family: Patrick and Erica, Sarah and Jon and Jonathan and Anne along with my nieces and nephews; my dear mother Gill Heneghan, who travelled out to Kiev to make sure I was all right; my late father Michael Heneghan; and most especially my children Rory, Nellie, Jeremy and Meriel. Francesca too. Ice creams all round.