On October 13, 2023, a literary and artistic event was held in the O.O.Osmerkin Art Memorial Museum with the participation of the writer Victoriia Shkaboy, who pre-presented the author's novel "Why Melissa?", which is expected to be released in November this year, and artists participating in the museum art - the "Art Studios" project on the topic: "Portraits of contemporaries on the background of the war", who carried out portrait sketches of those present at the event.
    Viktoriia Shkaboy is well known in Kropyvnytskyi as a journalist, she worked successfully for many years in the regional newspaper "Narodne Slovo", and also as a master embroiderer, her personal exhibition of the author's embroidery "Nytkovytivka" at the Art Museum in 2021 presented another facet of talent to the general public creative personality. But the main thing in her life is still literature, she repeatedly won various youth literary contests - "Khmarochos" (2018), "Granoslov" (2021), "Smoloskyp" (2022) and became a finalist in the novel competition of the publishing house "Vivat" ( 2023).
    During the meeting, Victoriia Shkaboy said that in 2023, the Kyiv publishing house "Condor" published her psychological novels "Sweet, Toxic, Misty" and " In depth of Carolina", which, thanks to the open endings, left behind some questions and the answers to them are given by the final part of a psychological trilogy. "The novel "Why Melissa?" is difficult for many reasons. It is a "novel within a novel", one part of which was written in a record short period of time, and the other was created over more than one year. The image and atmosphere of the city are present not only on the pages of novels, but also on the covers: it "came to life" thanks to the lens of the famous photographer Myroslava Lypa. And on the cover of the novel "Why Melissa?" a painting by the Kropyvnytskyi artist Olha Krasnopolska will appear," the writer noted in her speech.
    The author read excerpts from a still unpublished work to the musical accompaniment of Oleksiy Pavlenko on the amazing handpan percussion instrument, the meditative sounds of which put everyone present in a positive mood. And the artists Nataliia Kornilova, Iryna Kukharenko, Olha Krasnopolska, Viktoriia Pukhynda, Yevhen Klymchuk and Dmytro Totok were making sketches from nature at the same time.
    Victoriia Shkaboy was greeted by the artist Olha Krasnopolska, who demonstrated her creative works, made for the cover of the upcoming book "Why Melissa?", and fans of the writer's work, among them were students of the Faculty of Economics of the Central Ukrainian National Technical University, who also joined the art studios and drew characters of novels of the writer.
    Everyone who came to the event talked for a long time in the memorial hall of the museum - the house of the architect Yakiv Pauchenko and his nephew, the artist Oleksandr Osmerkin, where a creative atmosphere always reigned, and whose traditions are preserved to this day, because art is what lifts us above everyday life and strengthens faith in the victory of good over evil