Oksana Zabuzhko with Halyna Hryn - Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature - S4E3

Oksana Zabuzhko (author) and Halyna Hryn (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and President Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S.)

Oksana Zabuzhko (b.1960) is one Ukraine’s most important contemporary writers, the author of more than twenty books of different genres (poetry, fiction, non-fiction). She made her poetry debut at the age of 12, but, as her parents had been blacklisted during the Soviet purges of the 1970s, it was not until perestroika that her first book saw the light of day.

Zabuzhko has established herself as the country’s leading public intellectual, and has for years been listed by the media among Ukraine’s top 100 most influential people. Since 2013 she, along with her partner, artist Rostyslav Luzhetsky, have operated a small publishing house promoting quality non-commercial literature.

In this episode, we discuss what she has been doing since the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24, 2022, her extensive time in Poland and touring Europe since then, and we talk about her most influential work Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex as well as some of her more recent short work, and her 2022 essay about the war written for a Western audience, but not yet fully translated into English, “The Longest Journey.”

Encounters with Polish Literature is a video series for anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More about the Encounters with Polish Literature series and the timeline.

Learn more about this episode, and see the biography of the guest on the Polish Cultural Institute New York's website: https://bit.ly/3SQpAb8

Access the playlist of the entire series:
https://bit.ly/47Q7xHL

Bartek Remisko, Executive Producer
David A. Goldfarb, Host & Producer
Natalia Iyudin, Producer