Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Olesya Yaremchuk, Spring 2024 Harriman Resident at the Austrian Society for Literature. Moderated by Mark Andryczyk.
In the book Our Others. Stories of Ukrainian Diversity Olesya Yaremchuk explored the histories and personal stories of fourteen ethnic minority groups living within the boundaries of present-day Ukraine. She traveled to many settlements, from the bustling cities of Donbas and Bukovyna to the quiet villages of Bessarabia and Zakarpattia, to document how ethnic minorities of Ukraine live today and what memories they keep about their past.
Russia´s full-scale war is changing the ethnic landscape of Ukraine and the stories collected in the book become an archive of memory. Many members of national communities were forced to leave their homes. For instance, the Meskhetian Turks who lived near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, the Greeks of Mariupol, or the Roma of Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast.
Thanks to the support of the Harriman Institute and the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, Yaremchuk continues to research Ukrainian diversity and prepare new literary reportages from Ukraine. During the event, the author will present her book and talk about her current research.
Olesya Yaremchuk is a Ukrainian author and journalist focusing on the topic of cultural and national identity, and the frontier. Yaremchuk has served as the editor-in-chief of the Choven Publishing House, a Ukrainian publishing house specializing in reportage and documentary literature, and has contributed as a journalist to various publications both in Ukraine and abroad. She is a winner of the Samovydets Literary Reportage Award and the LitAccent of the Year Award, both in Ukraine, as well as a finalist of the ADAMI Media Prize and the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Award. She is a member of PEN Ukraine (Kyiv) and the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (Berlin). She has been named the Spring 2024 Harriman Resident at the Austrian Society for Literature, in partnership with the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria.
