Register by March 27 for the Spring 2026 TCUP Book Club

TCUP Book Club Returns! The Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program (HURI) and the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (Miami University) are thrilled to announce our upcoming TCUP Book Club in March-April 2026. Sign up by March 27. 

This spring, we will read Artem Chapeye’s most recent book of essays, Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns (published in Ukrainian as Не народжені для війни). The English-language translation by Zenia H. Tompkins was published in 2025 by Seven Stories Press. 

By registering for the TCUP Book Club, you will receive two emails about the book from TCUP director Dr. Emily Channell-Justice and from Havighurst Center director Dr. Stephen Norris to guide your reading. You will also be invited to a private (book club members only) online discussion with the author on Friday, April 10, 2026, at 10 a.m. (EDT).  Registration is now open!  

A BBC Ukraine Book of the Year, Chapeye’s writing provides a firsthand reflection of war and voluntary mobilization. Read his interview in the Kyiv Independent for more on his perspective of being a writer during wartime.  

From the Seven Stories Press website:  

In Ordinary People Don't Carry Machine Guns, Artem Chapeye reveals his war, intimate and senseless, withholding nothing about his motivations, his nightmares, his new relationship with the world. Here, one man, a pacifist turned fighter, a story writer turned soldier, considers the reasons for and reactions to war on a very personal level. 

Chapeye investigates his role in the Ukrainian people’s defense against the Russian army and his responsibilities as a father, a writer, a soldier, and a man of conviction. An avowed pacifist until 2022, Chapeye joined the Ukrainian army in the first days of the invasion. He tries to understand the large-scale decision-making that has a defining impact on both individual citizens and society at large: many of his fellow soldiers never considered enlisting before finding themselves at war; others fled the country. He wonders what his young children at home are doing and what they’re feeling.