Chila Woychik, Author and Editor

As part of my mission on this blog, I introduce prospective readers to authors they may not yet know about. I'd like you to meet Chila Woychik. Of French & German heritage, German-born Chila has lived in the Midwest most of her adult life. She has published widely, with essays in Cimarron, Passages North, Portland Review, and many other esteemed journals. 

Chila's books include the essay collection, Singing The Land: A Rural Chronology, published in 2020 by Shanti Arts of Maine. 

Find it here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Singing-Land-Chronology-Chila-Woychik/dp/1951651235

This is a 2025 essay about migrations titled A Place Called Place: http://www.chilawoychik.com/a-place-called-place_migrations.html

Here is a sample from that essay:

Migration is an opaque thing, clear enough in the light but slightly muddled upon closer examination, rather like a winter begun on snowshoes and finished on a slalom course. Life lives out this way, face in the wind, with the occasional lull for catching one’s breath, but there is movement, always movement. Adaptation, ah, adaptation, happens the moment we melt into movement’s embrace: a vulture adrift on the current above the tree line, the raptor riding the updrafts and occasionally adjusting its wing flaps for maximum efficiency. It exerts little effort yet continues to rise and circle, higher and higher, northward with the wind, a slow and steady pace, circle, lift, drift. It has adapted to its surroundings and become part of its place; this sort of adjustment keeps us sane in the midst of so much change....

For those interested in the lyric essay, and writings on conservation and the natural world -- our relationship with elemental forces written in the meditative style of Wendell Berry or Annie Dillard -- I recommend Chila's work highly. 

Samples and excerpts from her essays, all her books, along with links to interviews, and her award-winning essay, Guesswork, in its entirety, can be found at www.chilawoychik.com. 

Here is a link to an interview she did with Roanoke Review: https://www.roanokereview.org/interviews-backpage/2019/3/17/19/chila-woychik

Chila also publishes a mystery series, starting with the novella, The Query, featuring the intrigues of Maddie Hill, a small press publisher. Next in the Maddie Hill series is The Trail. slated to follow are The Return, and The Years. These are available from Port Yonder Press, http://www.portyonderpress.com/. 

Not only is Chila the recipient of writing awards from Emrys Foundation, and Red Savina Review, she's also the founding editor of Eastern Iowa Review, http://www.portyonderpress.com/. 

She was generous enough to publish fifteen of my photographs from remote locales such as the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, and tiny Moldovan villages, in the inagural issue of Eastern Iowa Review back in the spring of 2015. 

Here's a link to Chila's New Pages announcement of the magazine from 2015: https://www.newpages.com/blog/blog-items/new-lit-on-the-block-eastern-iowa-review/

Along with these photographs, the Eastern Iowa Review included three of my short nonfiction pieces, all of which are available in my first complete essay collection, How The Quiet Breathes, published in 2022 by New Meridian Arts: https://www.newmeridianarts.com/how-the-quiet-breathes

Evaluating my freshman effort at an essay collection, Chila wrote: 

Duende and a sense of place often coexist, inspiration stemming from immersive geography. John Michael Flynn's How the Quiet Breathes embodies this spark. From being meticulously searched by a German official on a train to drinking morning cognac with a Moldovan villager, this fascinating journey through John's travels is as evocative as it is enlightening. There is depth in the conversations and humility in the lessons learned. There is laughter, embarrassment, and a transparent realization of the human heart. You'll enjoy these poignant selections about people very much like us but in cultures vastly different from the American experience.