Regarding 2023: 4 prominent literary events held in Ukraine

Specially for Ukrainska pravda Chytomo editorial selected 4 prominent literary events, held in Ukraine in 2023. More reports from cultural events you can find at Chytomo.

Kyiv Book Arsenal vs Kyiv Book fest

In September 2023 the festival was held for the first time in Kyiv, the Gorodok Gallery shopping mall. The organizers reported around 25,000 people at the festival over three days, which is an impressive turnout for a first-time event held relatively far from the downtown. More than 100 publishers took part in KyivBookFest, and many of them reported good sales. The organizers of the festival conducted a survey to gauge the success of sales. All in all, the program included 160 events, and you could attend any just by donating. Visitors managed to raise 21,750 USD for printing charters and manuals for the Armed Forces, and 5,500 people attended the events.

Meridian Czernowitz: the main international point

Meridian Czernowitz is an international literary festival held annually in Chernivtsi, in Western Ukraine, since 2010. The festival attracts well-known poets from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Romania, and Ukraine, who are of significant interest to the audience. However, the city itself is the festival’s main highlight, hosting a variety of events including poetry readings, lectures, discussions, book presentations, literary walks, music and poetry evenings, wine and poetry evenings, and theater performances.

Amidst the full-scale invasion, the festival was conducted in both September 2022 and 2023.

The camp of hope for children from the frontline

The New York Literary Festival was held in the village of New York, Donetsk region, in October 2021, just a few kilometers from the front line. Organized by the NGO Cultural Elevator, the festival’s team included Kateryna Mikhalitsyna, Tetiana Pylypets, and Tetiana Vavryk. The festival was founded and curated by writer and PEN Ukraine member Viktoriia Amelina, killed by a Russian missile in Kramatorsk in July 2023.

Book Forum: the platform of the brightest discussions

The 30th anniversary of Book Forum, one Ukraine’s largest and oldest book festivals held annually in Lviv, took a notable experimental approach this year. It introduced a new venue and a hybrid format, moving away from the previous online iteration. The key topic of the festival was "Writing the Future." What events did it include? How did publishers feel about the book fair’s new location? What pressing questions did the audience poise to the foreign speakers and what happened at night, or rather, during the evenings of poetry and music? 

Among the speakers were reporter Wojciech Tochman, historian Timothy Garton Ash, reporter Luke Harding, journalist Catalina Gómez, scholar Uilleam Blacker and others. 

One of the brightest conversation was "War as the collapse of civilization: Can there be happiness after war?" with Vakhtang Kebuladze, Anne Applebaum, Tetyana Oharkova, Slavenka Drakulić and Maksym Yakovlyev. Ukrainian journalist and blogger Yana Brenzey asked Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić if she blurred the line between the good and the evil in her book "War Is The Same Everywhere" when comparing the loss of a son in the war to a Ukrainian and a Russian mother. And the response cause a big wave of reactions from Ukrainians at the festival and after - in social media.