LYUBA YAKIMCHUK

LYUBA YAKIMCHUK, a Ukrainian poet, screenwriter and journalist, was born in Pervomaisk, Luhansk oblast, Ukraine and currently lives in Kyiv. She is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including iak MODA (like FASHION, 2009) and Abrykosy Donbasu (Apricots of Donbas, 2015), and wrote the script for the film The Word Building.

Yakimchuk has received many literary awards, including the International Slavic Poetic Award, the Bohdan-Ihor Antonych Prize, and the Smoloskyp Prize, three of Ukraine’s most prestigious awards for young poets. She is also the winner of the International Literary Contest “Coronation of the Word.” Yakimchuk’s poems have appeared in journals in Ukraine, the U.S., Sweden, Germany, Poland, Israel, Lithuania, and Belarus. Her poems have been translated into English, Swedish, German, French, Polish, Hebrew, Slovak, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Romanian, Serbian, Belarusian, and Russian, and her essays into English and Swedish.

Yakimchuk performs in a musical and poetic duet with the Ukrainian double bass player Mark Tokar; their projects include Apricots of Donbas and Women, Smoke, and Dangerous Things. Her poetry has been performed by the singer Mariana Sadovska (Cologne) and improvised by vocalist Olesya Zdorovetska (Dublin).

Yakimchuk also works as a cultural manager. She organized the Rik Semenka (Semenko Year) project (2012) dedicated to the Ukrainian futurist writer Mykhail Semenko, and was curator for the literary programs Cultural Forum “Donkult” (2015, Lviv) and Cultural Forum “GaliciaKult” (2016, Kharkiv).

Lyuba Yakimchuk’s events in the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series, entitled Decomposition, took place in October 2016.