Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a panel moderated by Mark Andryczyk featuring Olena Jennings, Alexander J. Motyl, Dzvinia Orlowsky, and Irene Zabytko.
What are the different ways that Ukrainian literature can be defined in 2019? Literature written in the Ukrainian language? Literature written by citizens of Ukraine in any language? Literature written in Ukrainian outside of Ukraine? Literature written by Ukrainians living outside of Ukraine, in any language? Literature written about Ukrainians in any language? This event gathers a panel of writers and scholars at a round table to present their literary works and to discuss various ways of belonging to Ukrainian literature.
OLENA JENNINGS is the author of Songs from an Apartment (Underground Books, 2017) and Memory Project (Underground Books, 2018.) Her translations of Ukrainian poetry appear in the anthology Words for War (Academic Studies Press, 2017, in collaboration with Oksana Lutsyshyna), the anthology White Chalk of Days (Academic Studies Press, 2017,) Poetry International, and Wolf. Her translations of Iryna Shuvalova’s poetry collection Pray to the Empty Wheels in collaboration with the author, will be released in fall 2019 by Lost Horse Press. She is the curator of the Poets of Queens reading series.
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is a writer, painter, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of nine novels, Whiskey Priest, Who Killed Andrei Warhol, Flippancy, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, My Orchidia, Sweet Snow, Fall River, Vovochka, Ardor, and a collection of poetry, Vanishing Points. Motyl’s artwork has been shown in solo and group shows in New York City, Philadelphia, and Toronto and is part of the permanent collection of two museums. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark and is the author of seven academic books and numerous articles.
DZVINIA ORLOWSKY, Ukrainian-American poet, editor, and translator, is a Pushcart prize recipient and founding editor (1993-2001) of Four Way Books. She is author of six poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press including Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones (2009) for which she received a Sheila Motton Book Award; Silvertone (2013) for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association's 2014 Co-Poet of the Year, and her most recent, Bad Harvest published in October, 2018. Dzvinia teaches at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing of Pine Manor College, Providence College, and is the founding director of “Night Riffs: A Solstice Magazine Reading and Music Series.”
IRENE ZABYTKO is a writer, filmmaker, and teacher. She has completed her 2016-2017 tenure as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in Ukraine where she was doing research on her next novel based on the life of the 19th century writer, Nikolai Gogol. While there, she was also the English translator for the forthcoming non-fiction book: Russia’s Hybrid Aggression: Lessons for the World Yevhen Mahda (Kalamar Publishing House, Kyiv, Ukraine). Her latest book is The Fictions Prescription: How to Write and Improve Your Fiction Like the Great Literary Masters. She teaches fiction and creative non-fiction at Gotham Writers’ Workshop.
MARK ANDRYCZYK has administrated the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University since 2008 and has taught Ukrainian literature at its Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His monograph The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2012. In 2008-2017 he organized the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series (cosponsored by the Harriman and Kennan Institutes), which brought leading Ukrainian literary figures to audiences in North America. Andryczyk is editor and compiler of The White Chalk of Days, the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology.
