Juri Andruchowytsch

Juri Andruchowytsch Foto: gezett

Yuri Andrukhovych (*1960, Iwano-Frankiwsk, Ukraine) is amongst the most well-known authors of the “Eighties”, a generation of young writers who up until Perestroika published in the underground. He made his literary debut as a poet, and then became renowned for his novels, but has dedicated himself for some time anew to poetry. Andrukhovych, now as then, is one of the most well-known authors of his country, whose work is enjoying an ever stronger reception by the younger generation in Ukraine.

Since Ukraine's independence he began to become more strongly interested in politics, he was a co-founder of a literary-philosophical discussion series about 'Geopoetics', which also concerned itself with the political directions of the country. In Germany he is known beside his activities as an author, above all as an advocate of a European – instead of a Eurasian – direction in Ukraine.

In 1985 he cofounded the legendary literary performance group “Bu-Ba-Bu” (Burlesk-Balagan-Buffonada). His three novels, Rekreacij (1992), Moskoviada (1993) and Perverzija (1999), were translated into German, Polish and Russian. For the novel Twelve Rings (2005), Yuri Andrukhovych was awarded the Leipziger Book Prize for European Cultural Diplomacy in 2006.

Yuri Andrukhovych´s poetry, which until now consists of three anthologies, creates a carnivalistic, bizarre, almost monstrous circus-world, in which the borders between the physcial and the metaphysical blur.

He lives in Iwano-Frankiwsk.

Yuri Andrukhovych was a participant of the Literaturexpress Europa 2000.  In 2001 he was awarded the Herder Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S., Hamburg.

 

Publications

Poetry

Nebo i ploschtschi (Heaven and Plazas), 1985
Seredmistja (Downtown), 1989
Exotytschni ptachi i roslyny (Exotic Plants and Birds), 1991
Exotytschni ptachi i roslyny s dodatkom „Indija“ (Exotic Plants and Birds with the Supplement ‘India’), 1997

Novels

Rekreaziji, 1992
Zwölf Ringe (Twelve Rings), Suhrkamp 2005
Geheimnis (Secret), Suhrkamp 2008
Perversion, Suhrkamp 2011

Boris Chersonskij

Boris Chersonskij

Boris Khersonsky’s (born 1950 Czernowitz/Ukraine) first poems were already known in Odessa in the late seventies. However due to his non-conformist, anti-system worldview, he was not allowed to publish in official presses. During the seventies and eighties Khersonsky was one of the most important representatives of the Samizdat Movement in Odessa. Samizdat referred to the distribution of alternative, non-conformist, anti-system literature, through unofficial channels; for example copying by hand, typewriter or photocopying, and passing on the copies. It was only after the end of the USSR that he was able to publish with officially recognised publishing houses. Today he counts as one of the best-known poets of Ukraine. His work has received prestigious awards in his own country as well as in Russia. Khersonsky writes in Russian.

Boris Khersonsky studied medicine and works to this day as the Head of the Institute for Clinical Psychology at the University of Odessa. Alongside his many poetic works, he has also published six monographs on psychology and psychiatry.

Boris Khersonsky has also won the ‘Kievskie lavry’ Festival Prize (2008) and is the two-time winner of the international Voloshin Poetry Competition (2006 & 2007), and was nominated for the ‘Andrey Bely’ Literature Prize in 2007. He lives in Odessa.

 

Publications

Vosmaya dolya, 1993
Post Scriptum, Titul 1998
Svitok, Druk 2002
Semeiny arhiv, NLO 2006
Spirichuels, NLO 2009
Psalmy i Ody Solomona, Folio 2009
Poka ne stemnelo, NLO 2010

Olena Herasymyuk

Olena Herasymyuk

Olena Herasymiuk (born 1991 Kiev, Ukraine) studied literature in Kiev. In 2013 she was awarded the Ukrainian President’s Prize for Poetry, which she refused in protest against the Yanukovych regime. She is part of the younger generation of Ukrainian poets, whose work distinguishes itself through, among other characteristics, a newly awakening national consciousness. In her texts she often poses questions of the relationship between the self and the outside world.

In 2012 she received first prize in the competition “In Memory of Leonid Kislev”, in 2013 the International Ukrainian-German Literature Prize from O. Gonchar and also in 2013, the second prize in the Literature Competition “Fakel” in the poetry category.

She has published her poetry in “Bukowina Magazine”, “Sunflower”, „Ukrainian Literature Paper” und “Literary Ukraine”.

Halyna Kruk

Halyna Kruk

For the poet, prose writer and literary academic Halyna Kruk (born 1974, Lviv, Ukraine), poetry is unthinkable without the immediate reality that surrounds us. For her, it is impossible “to write about the stars and the heavens, when there is something more important, contemporary and relevant. Poetry is built from living material and that calls for a painstaking treatment of the poetic resources”.

She published her first two poetry collections in 1997. She also writes children’s poetry and prose. Her children’s books “Marko mandruje navkolo svitu” (Marko travels around the world) and “Vazhko buty najmenshym” (It’s hard to be the youngest) have already been translated into 15 languages.

Kruk is a member of the Ukrainian Writers’ Association and currently holds a professorship in Literary Studies at the University of Lviv. In 1996 she was awarded the “Ptyvitannia Zhyttia” Prize as well as the “Granoslov Prize”. In 2003 she won the international “Step by Step” competition and received the “Gaude Polonia” scholarship. German translations of her poetry can be found on lyrikline.org.

Publications (selected)

Mandry u Poshukakh Domu (Wandering in search of the house), 1997
Slidy na Pisku (Traces in the Sand), 1997
Oblychchia poza svitlynoju (Face out of Frame), 2005
Spіv/іsnuvannja (Song/Existence), 2013

Jelena Saslawskaja

Jelena Saslawskaja

The poet, spoken word artist and journalist Yelena Saslavskaya (born 1977 Lisychansk/Ukraine) enjoys the significant recognition of well-known Ukrainian literary figures, such as Yuri Pokaltshuk. The author writes poetry in order to say to the world: I love you, just the way you are – tragic and comic, ugly and beautiful, unbearable and useful. Her experimental texts win the reader over through fresh and haunting images, in which she manages to connect the contemporary with the eternal.

In 2008 she was a slam finalist in Donetsk and winner of the Kiev Slam. In 2011 she won the international Dzejas Slam in Riga. At the Ukrainian slam “ZEX” in Kharkhiv in 2006, she was awarded the title “President of the Globe”.

Saslavskaya lives in Luhansk and works for the news website “Culture Collotype”, as well as for the newspaper of the Luhansk state academy for art and culture, “Tuning Fork”.

Publications (selected)

Epokha moei lyubvi (The Time of My Love), Swetlitsa 1997
Maminy sljozy (The Tears of my Mother), Knizhkovyi svet 1997
Instinkt svobody (The Instinct of Liberty), Sklyanka tchasu 2005
Bdysch-Men i Co. (Bdysch-Man and co.), SPD-Reznikov 2011

Serhij Zhadan

Serhij Zhadan Foto: gezett

Serhiy Zhadan (*1974, Starobilsk, Urkaine) is one of the most important Ukrainian writers of the younger generation, and has been described by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as “Ukraine’s most audacious voice on politics and life at the edge of Europe...”. He began writing during his studies, first poetry, later prose as well. He made his debut in 1995 with the anthology Zytatnyk, which was followed by numerous publications. Since then various translations of his poetry and prose have appeared, in Germany, Russia and other countries. Some 9 years ago Zhadan was among the activists of the Orange Revolution. He is also active as a voice of the recent protest movement against the Yanukovich regime, and took part in the demonstrations in Kharkiw.

His literary Ukraine is a land in which the post-socialist transformation went wrong, where society slid back into a kind of natural state, without the open outbreak of violence, where the lilac sunsets shimmer breathtakingly, because environmental destruction has conjured up its own kind of natural beauty.

Serhiy Zhadan was awarded the Hubert Burda Prize for young poetry in 2006.

 

Publications

Die Geschichte der Kultur zu Anfang des Jahrhunderts. Gedichte (The History of Culture at the Beginning oft he Century. Poems), Suhrkamp 2006
Depeche Mode. Roman, Suhrkamp 2007
Anarchy in the UKR, Suhrkamp 2007
Hymne der demokratischen Jugend (Hyms of the Democratic Youth), Suhrkamp 2009
Efiopija, Charkiw: Folio, 2009
Lili Marlen, Charkiw: Folio, 2009
Big Mäc. Geschichten (Big Mac, Stories), Suhrkamp 2011
Die Erfindung des Jazz im Donbass. Roman (The Invention of Jazz in the Donets Basin, a novel, Suhrkamp 2012
Vognepal'ni j nozhovi, Kharkiw: Klub Simejnogo Dozvillja, 2012