Natalia Ilyin

I never expected to be a writer. I expected to be a graphic designer, but things did not go that way. My first big break happened because I got on a bus in NYC and saw an ad for "Anastasia," the cartoon movie put out by Twentieth Century Fox in the late Nineties. As I sat looking at the cartoons of Anastasia and the evil, green Rasputin on that bus ad, something happened to me. I felt burning in my veins. Really. Burning. I went home and wrote about the time my grandmother had met the real Rasputin, and about how her family died in the Revolution. I wrote that Twentieth Century Fox had taken a true historical story of death and tragedy and repackaged it into something unrecognizable that included plastic Rasputin toys at Burger King.

After I wrote the piece, I didn't know what to do with it. So I sent it off--by fax, in those days-- to the Op-Ed editor at the New York Times. I wasn't a writer then and I didn't know anybody or anything so figured the chances of getting it published were very low, but I felt better having written it. A few hours later I got a call from the night editor. With me on the phone, she lopped the top off the piece, rearranged a few things to make it better, and the next morning the article came out in the Times.

For me, it was like the shot heard round the world. This was way before the internet or blogs or anything like that. Getting something published in the Times meant it went to all Times affiliates, the International Herald Tribune-- everywhere. I started hearing from people I hadn't heard from in years. People in London. People in Paris. People that agreed with me. People that patted me on the back for saying something about cultural appropriation. People that disagreed. It started a ball rolling. That day I realized the power one person can have. It was the day I became a writer.