Join two Ukrainian authors, Oksana Lutsyshyna and Yuliya Musakovska, in discussion with Valzhyna Mort about the way language affects and reflects the realities of war and extremity. The panel will pay tribute to Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian author killed by a Russian missile, and her posthumous book Looking at Women, Looking at War.

Oksana Lutsyshyna is a Ukrainian writer, translator, and poet, author of three novels, collection of short stories, and five books of poetry. For her novel Ivan and Phoebe, published in English by Deep Vellum Publishing, she was awarded the Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize (2020) and the Taras Shevchenko National Award in fiction (2021). She is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She translated into English, in tandem with Olena Jennings, a war memoir of Artem Chekh, and a collection of poems by Kateryna Kalytko. Currently, Oksana is a resident at the Amy Clampitt Poet Residency Program in Lenox, MA. 

Yuliya Musakovska (born 1982) is a Ukrainian poet, writer and translator. She has published six poetry collections in Ukrainian, most recently Stones and Nails (2024). Her collection The God of Freedom (2021) was among the finalists for the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Prize and top eight nominees for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize. In 2024, The God of Freedom was released from Arrowsmith Press in English translation by Olena Jennings and the author. In 2023, Yuliya paused her 20-year career in international business to dedicate herself to cultural activism and global advocacy for Ukraine. She is a member of PEN Ukraine. She lives in Lviv, Ukraine, and has remained there throughout the war.

Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2011) and, mostly recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), named one of the best poetry book of 2020 by The New York Times and The NPR, and the winner of the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. Mort is an Associate Professor in Literatures in English at Cornell University.

Special thanks to Ithaca City of Asylum for partnering with us for this event.