On the evening of October 26, 2024 the Ukrainian League of Philadelphia hosted a packed-house for A Ukrainian Dictionary of War: An Evening with Writer Ostap Slyvynsky. The event was presented in Ukrainian and English and was cosponsored by the ULP Cultural Trust, Inc., the Ukrainian Community Foundation of Philadelphia and the Ukrainian Selfreliance Federal Credit Union.
Slyvynsky is a Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist, and scholar. He has authored five books of poetry: Sacrifice of Big Fish (1998), The Midday Line (2004), Ball in Darkness (2008), Adam (2012), The Winter King (2018), as well as The Dictionary of War (2023), a documentary book based on a testimony of participants and witnesses of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. His books have been published in the USA (The Winter King, Lost Horse Press 2023), Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Macedonia. He is also known for translating the works of Derek Walcott, William Carlos Williams, Charles Simic, Czesław Miłosz, Olga Tokarczuk, Georgi Gospodinov, and many others. He was elected the Vice President of PEN Ukraine in 2022.
At the event, moderated by Mark Andryczyk, Slyvynsky read his poetry and prose from the award-winning Winter King (Lost Horse Press, 2023), and A Ukrainian Dictionary of War (Lost Horse Press) in Ukrainian while Andryczyk read the English-language translations of these texts. The two then discussed today’s Ukrainian literature in a time of war. This was then followed by an engaging Q & A with the public and a lengthy autograph session with the author. Slyvynsky is the latest in a long series of leading Ukrainian writers who have shared their works with Philadelphians over the past two decades.
