A literary festival in a war zone

For many years, I helped organise a literary festival here in Cornwall. Although it involved a lot of hard work, I loved the experience - we had a great team of people and it was a thrill to meet some of my literary heroes. But it could be very stressful at times. Like when storms wrecked the marquee and we had to switch venues at the last minute; or when an author turned up an hour late for their talk; or the projector didn’t work; or one of our featured books became shrouded in controversy in the run-up to the event; or, worst of all, when attendees complained.

Imagine, then, running a literary festival in a war zone. The weather would be the least of your worries when punters literally risked their lives to attend. Such were the obstacles facing the Meridian Czernowitz Literary Festival, held in Zaporizhzhia at the end of June. And yet more than 150 local residents turned up to listen to readings and talks by some of Ukraine’s best known writers. 

The festival was held in a basement in the centre of town - free from the risk of stormy weather, but far more importantly, out of reach of glide bombs and missile strikes. Other than this, the format of author talks and book signings was reassuringly familiar. Just like in Cornwall, the majority of the audience was female, but in Zaporizhzhia this reflects the fact that most men of fighting age are in the military. And I have to admit that from the photos, the audience looks decidedly younger than the predominantly grey-haired brigade that frequents the North Cornwall Book Festival.

Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast of Ukraine, is the capital of one of the regions that Russia claimed to have annexed in a phoney referendum back in the autumn of 2022. It lies just 30 kilometres from the front line and is the target of regular aerial attacks on civilian homes and infrastructure. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, the largest in Europe, is nearby and has been controlled by Russia since 2022, putting the area at repeated risk of nuclear catastrophe.

“In the eyes of the Russians, we are holding a festival of Ukrainian literature on their territories,” Svyatoslav Pomerantsev, president of the literary group Meridian Czernowitz that organised the festival, told the Kyiv Independent. “They bomb us every day, but we still have large literary festivals. It lifts people’s spirits.”

Ukrainian literature has often taken the form of resistance, given Russia’s historical persecution of Ukrainian authors and its repeated attempts to suppress Ukrainian language and culture. With both under threat again since Russia began annexing parts of the country in 2014, Ukraine has undergone something of a cultural renaissance. 

Many of the country’s writers have enlisted in Ukraine’s armed forces or taken up positions to defend their country’s freedom. Tragically, many have lost their lives since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. PEN Ukraine tracks the dozens of cultural figures, including writers, artists and musicians, who have been killed in the war. I have written before about the deaths of the novelist Victoria Amelina and the poet Maksym Kryvtsov. 

Authors at the Meridian Czernowitz Literary Festival in Zaporizhzhia included:

Serhiy Zhadan, one of Ukraine’s best known writers, his non-fiction work Sky above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front, an intimate account of resistance and survival in the first four months of the full-scale invasion, was released in English in 2023. Zhadan also writes critically acclaimed fiction and poetry, including the novel Voroshilovgrad - the Soviet name for Luhansk.

Peter Pomerantsev, a Ukrainian-born British journalist and TV producer, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School Of Economics, whose latest book How to win an information war: the propagandist who outwitted Hitler tells the true story of the largely forgotten British WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer.

Yuliia Paievska, a medic who founded the volunteer ambulance corps Taira’s Angels, its name based on her call sign Taira. She was captured and imprisoned by Russian soldiers for three months in 2022 after documenting her work with a body camera during the Siege of Mariupol. Paievska recently published her first poetry collection Nazhyvo (Live).

Yuri Andrukhovych, a long-standing pioneer of Ukrainian language and culture dating back to Soviet times. He co-founded the Bu-Ba-Bu literary performance group in 1985 that explored the cultural landscape of the Soviet Union’s decline and Ukraine’s move towards independence. His novel The Moscoviad recounts a series of absurd events surrounding a Ukrainian poet in Moscow trying to get back to Kyiv. It was translated into English in 2009.

Yaryna Chonohuz, a poet, military medic and drone pilot in the Ukrainian Marine Corps. Her 2020 publication How the War Circle Bends is a collection of free-verse poetry about trench warfare, written while serving on the front lines in the Donbas.

Artem Checkh first found literary acclaim with his essay collection Absolute Zero, a reflection on his military service in 2015-2016. He later fought on the front line in Bakhmut, one of the most lethal battles of the current war. His latest novel Dress up Game explores psychological transformations in the chaos of war. 

Andriy Lyubka, an author whose latest collection of essays War from the Rear deals with his switch from writer to front-line volunteer. In his satirical debut novel Carbide, a drunken history professor enlists the help of local criminals to dig a tunnel into the EU and smuggle out the entire population of Ukraine. It was published in English translation in 2019.


Read the full article in the Kyiv Independent here

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