On 3 October, the Prague centre for contemporary art DOX will host a conversation between Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko and poet Maria Illyashenko. The discussion will centre on Zabuzhko’s essay “The Longest Journey” about the origins of the Russian–Ukrainian war. They will also touch on themes of memory, language and literature.
Oksana Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian writer and one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Ukrainian culture. She gained international recognition with the novella “Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex” (1996). Her novel “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” (2009) is an epic family saga that became one of the first modern Ukrainian novels to combine personal and family memory with the suppressed history of the 20th century.
Among her other works published in English are “A Kingdom of Fallen Statues: Poems and Essays” (1996) and the short-story collection “Your Ad Could Go Here” (2014).
Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have received numerous international awards, including the Angelus Award for the best Central European book (2013), Ukraine’s Taras Shevchenko National Prize (2019) and France’s Legion of Honour (2023).
Maria Illyashenko is a poet, writer and translator of Czech–Ukrainian heritage. She is the author of three poetry collections. In the most recent of them, “Wild Urban Stories” (Animals Come to the City, 2025), she focuses on the big city as a home for people, animals and plants.
Her first book, “Osip Heads South” (Osip Heads South, 2015), was nominated for the Magnesia Litera award in the “Debut of the Year” category. She also writes short stories, columns and essays.
In 2023, she won the Tom Stoppard Prize for the best essay written in Czech, in which she addressed the theme of Central European cultural identity.
She translates from Polish and Ukrainian into Czech, mainly contemporary poetry. She has edited a number of books, including the anthology of war reportage “Bread from a Minefield” (Bread from a Minefield, 2022). Since 2022, she has worked as an editor at DOX, where she prepares exhibition catalogues and other books for publication.