A Lesia Ukrainka bookshelf
Digital. Open access. Free.
There are few things in life that are more satisfying than watching the world discover Lesia Ukrainka, an iconic Ukrainian writer of the turn of the twentieth century whose words still hold a life-changing force.
Due to her choice to write in the Ukrainian language, which was suppressed by the Russian Empire during her lifetime and is still recovering from centuries of colonial prohibitions and restrictions, Lesia Ukrainka remains virtually unread outside of Ukraine. And yet, she is the one who not only elevated Ukrainian literature to a global level but also rewrote major western myths from a new, groundbreaking, woman-centred and anti-imperialist perspective.
Since 2021, I have been promoting Lesia Ukrainka’s works in English. Here are some links to my work you might find useful while exploring her ouevre.
Read
My recent essay in Byline Supplement: Lesia Ukrainka - Restoring a Ukrainian Icon
The essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books I’m most proud of: Subverting the Canon of Patriarchy: Lesya Ukrainka’s Revisionist Mythmaking
The second issue of the London Ukrainian Review, the UIL’s special publication I edit, is dedicated to Lesia Ukrainka. Scroll down to Issue 2 to read the translations of Lesia Ukrainka’s work which have won or been shortlisted for the Ukrainian Literature in Translation Prize, run by the UIL. I particularly recommend this excerpt from Nina Murray’s translation of Cassandra, Daisy Gibbons’ selection of Lesia Ukrainka’s queer letters to Olha Kobylianska, and this excerpt from Daisy’s translation of By the Sea.
Lesia Ukrainka at 150: a journey through the British Library collections (a blog I co-authored with Katie McElvannie, Part I and Part II)
Watch
Lesia Ukrainka: Fin-de-siècle Ukrainian Feminism (10 Things Everyone Should Know about Ukraine, a series of short films by the Ukrainian Institute London)
The Unknown Feminist of Fin-de-siècle Europe: Lesia Ukrainka (our conversation with Oksana Zabuzhko at the British Library)
Lesia Ukrainka: Subverting the Western Canon of Patriarchy (Birkbeck Arts Weeks 2021)
Listen
Wandering the Edge: Talking Lesia Ukrainka with Dr Sasha Dovzhyk (podcast)
Look out for the translations of Lesia Ukrainka’s plays forthcoming with Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute: Cassandra (translated by Nina Murray), The Blue Rose (translated by Nina Murray), and The Forest Song (translated by Virlana Tkacz and
Wanda Phipps; read an excerpt in the London Ukrainian Review).
You can buy a paperback of the London Ukrainian Review publication dedicated to Lesia Ukrainka here.