Pre-Launch Reading From “The God of Freedom” and conversation with Julia Musakovska

Yuliya Musakovska celebrates the upcoming release of her poetry collection, The God of Freedom, in English translation from Arrowsmith Press with cover art by Anastasiia Starko. Joining her will be her translator Olena Jennings. The event will feature a reading in both Ukrainian and English. Vasyl Makhno will moderate a discussion about the wartime reality of Ukraine under the Russian invasion and the role of cultural activism in the Ukrainian resistance. Yuliya and Olena will also speak about their translation process.

Published in Ukraine in 2021, The God of Freedom reflects on many events of Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine that began in 2014 before taking its full-scale form in 2022. The collection was shortlisted for the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Prize and named in the top eight nominees for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize. Poems from the collection have been translated into many languages and published in The Southern Review, AGNI, Tupelo Quarterly, NELLE, The Common, and other journals and anthologies.

Yuliya Musakovska is an award-winning Ukrainian poet and translator. She has published five poetry collections, among them Hunting for Silence (2014) Men, Women, and Children (2015), and The God of Freedom (2021). She received many awards in Ukraine, including the prestigious Smoloskyp Prize for young authors (2010) and the DICTUM Prize (2013). Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and published worldwide. Yuliya Musakovska translates poetry from and to Swedish and English, focusing on the translation of contemporary Ukrainian authors. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.

Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press, 2022), the chapbook Memory Project, and the novel Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021). She is a translator of collections by Ukrainian poets, Kateryna Kalytko, together with Oksana Lutsyshyna, and Vasyl Makhno. She was shortlisted for the Ukrainian Literature in Translation Prize 2023 for her translations of Yuliya Musakovska’s poetry. She founded and curates Poets of Queens reading series and press.