An Evening of Ukrainian Poetry

Join our friends from City of Asylum, as we welcome three Ukrainian poets to read (in the language of their choice!).

Olena Boryshpolets is a poet, writer, journalist, actress, cultural manager, author of the short story book Ukrainian Detox and the book of poetry Orpheus and Eurydice in New York. Olena is also a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a co-founder of the public organization Creativity Without Borders, and a member of PEN America.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Olena traveled to Poland, where she spent a year acting in the Polish-Ukrainian play Life in Case of War. Since March 2023, she has been a Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and a writer-in-residence at the City of Asylum Fellowship for Ukrainian Writers.

Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko is a renowned film director, writer, music producer, and publisher. Over the years, his feature documentaries and fictional short films have had a lasting impact on Ukrainian culture. With a prolific music career, he has amassed millions of streams. His latest poetry collection, "FAQ Ukraine," delves into the sophisticated and often controversial love-hate relationship between the poet and his motherland, guiding readers through the labyrinth of history while shedding light on the nation's uncertain future.
During the first year of the war in Ukraine, Oleksandr stayed in the country and became involved in a volunteer movement working with foreign journalists as a producer, filmmaker, and writer to spread the truth about the situation and the historical context. He has been a Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and a writer in residence as part of City of Asylum’s Fellowship for Ukrainian Writers since March 2023 with his wife, Mari Frazé-Frazénko, a gifted Ukrainian singer.

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, literary and film critic from Kyiv, Ukraine. He graduated from Donetsk University with a degree in Russian philology and culture studies, and from 1992 to 2018, he wrote his works in Russian, was mainly published in Russia, and was considered a representative of Russian literature. Following the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Volodymyr left Donetsk and moved to a town near Kyiv where he wrote Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, his first novel in the Ukrainian language, which was shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize—Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Volodymyr learned Ukrainian from scratch, and has dedicated himself to speaking Ukrainian, rather than Russian, his mother-tongue, as an act of resistance and perseverance. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book (1999) and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days (2017). Volodymyr’s prose is full of phantasmagorical images and storylines, as well as explicit and implicit allusions to well-known texts. He is sometimes called the “magical postmodernist” due to the intertextuality and richness of his prose. He is a Research Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and writer-in-residence at City of Asylum with his wife, Olesia Rafeyenko, since June 2023.