Join the prize-winning Ukrainian poets Yuliya Musakovska and Olena Huseinova as well as Hanna Khriakova, international manager of the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature, as they carry the voices of their lost friends and comrades and share those who are defending Ukraine, as soldier-poets on the front line, or as writers and artists on the home front and on the international stage.

Yuliya Musakovska is a Ukrainian poet 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 the top eight nominees for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize. In 2024, this book was released by Arrowsmith Press in English translation by Olena Jennings and the author. 

Yuliya has received many literary awards in Ukraine, including the prominent Smoloskyp Prize for Poetry. Her poems have been translated into over thirty languages and published worldwide. In 2023, she paused her 20-year career in business and IT to dedicate herself to cultural activism and global advocacy for Ukraine. As a translator, Yuliya works with English and Swedish languages. She is a member of PEN Ukraine. 

Olena Huseinova is a radio host, radio producer, and writer. Works at Radio Culture (Suspilne). She received the Ivan Franko Award (jointly with Myroslav Layuk) for the special project “Lesya Ukrainka: 30 radio stories”. The author of two poetry collections, Open Rider (2012) and Superheroes (2016), as well as three poetry books, including Night Air (2024). Superheroes won first prize in the illustrators’ competition at the international festival Book Arsenal in 2017 as well as several prestigious international awards in the field of book design. She has written essays and other short pieces – including in Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War (Penguin, 2023) – and has also been translated into Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hebrew, Finnish, Lithuanian, Estonian, and other languages. 

Hanna Khriakova (she/her) is a culturologist and communicational and international manager of Lviv UNESCO City of Literature. Working internationally she is mostly interested in nuances of languages and translation, specifically in the Ukrainian language and its relations to other languages. Hanna also recently she performed as a part of a team on the “Unseen Force” project, which highlights the difficulties of living in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. She recently joined the team of the Home of Sound institution in Lviv and now is researching how the soundscape affects our self-feeling and how the soundscape of war specifically affects our daily lives.