Webinar. Oksana Shchur: Lystuvannia Sofii Iablons’koi, Volodymyra Vynnychenka ta Rozalii Vynnychenko, 1928-1935 (Kyiv: Komora, 2026)

How Is a Writer Born? Can the making of a writer be traced through private correspondence?

This online conversation explores Lystuvannia Sofii Iablons’koi, Volodymyra Vynnychenka ta Rozalii Vynnychenko (1928-1935), a collection that brings together letters preserved in archives in France and the United States and offers a fresh perspective on three important figures in Ukrainian culture. The correspondence tells a story not only of friendship and creative exchange, but also of Sofia Yablonska’s development as a writer. The letters reveal Volodymyr Vynnychenko as an attentive mentor and editor, Rozaliia Vynnychenko as an independent and engaged interlocutor, and the Ukrainian literary milieu of interwar Europe as a vibrant space of intellectual debate, creative uncertainty, and international cultural connections. During the conversation, Oksana Shchur will discuss the process of working with archival materials, the principles behind annotating the letters, and the ways in which this rich epistolary legacy opens new possibilities for reading and understanding 20th-century Ukrainian literature.

Oksana Shchur is a Ukrainian writer, essayist, literary scholar, and translator based in Berlin. She is the author of the essay collection Cassandra Is Wrong Only Once, longlisted for the Yuri Shevelyov Prize (2025), and editor, commentator, and author of the introduction to Lystuvannia Sofii Iablons’koi, Volodymyra Vynnychenka ta Rozalii Vynnychenko (1928-1935). Her work explores war, memory, cultural identity, emigration, and Ukrainian culture in a broader European context. She studied literature at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. For six years, she worked on the literary program of the Book Arsenal International Festival and coordinated international collaborations with the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. In 2022, she joined international initiatives documenting wartime experiences, including the online anthology Stimmen gegen den Krieg in cooperation with Literaturhaus Niederösterreich. In 2025, she curated the audio project 20 Best Short Stories of the New Ukraine for Radio NV. Her current research focuses on the transnational history of twentieth-century Ukrainian literature through archival sources. She regularly lectures and presents her work in Ukraine and internationally.

The conversation will be held in Ukrainian.

Moderated by Vasyl Makhno

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