Oksana Lutsyshyna

Oksana Petrivna Lutsyshyna^[a] (née Kishko;^[2] born 10 October 1974)^[3] is a Ukrainian poet, professor and writer who is a recipient of the Shevchenko National Prize, and member of PEN Ukraine.^[4] She primarily writes poetry and fiction in Ukrainian,^[5] with additional work on blogs for the feminist website Povaha.^[4]

Early life and education[edit]

Born on 10 October 1974, in the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod.^[6][4] Lutsyshyna received her degree in 1995 from Uzhhorod National University's Faculty of Romano-Germanic Philology.^[7] Lutsyshyna received training at Kansas University in the United States from 1993 to 1994. Following her graduation, she worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Foreign Languages at the Uzhhorod State Institute of Economics, Informatics and Law (1998–2001) and as an assistant in the Department of English at Uzhhorod National University (1995–1998). A degree candidate at the University of Lviv's Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics from 1999 to 2001.

As part of the teacher exchange program, she went back to the United States in 2001 and worked at the University of South Florida.^[8] Lutsyshyna enrolled in the postgraduate program in applied linguistics when the program completed, and after three semesters, she switched to French literature. She pursued a master's degree in women's studies concurrently, where she focused on critical theory, racialization and gender. Her master's thesis, which was a comparison of Oksana Zabuzhko's and Assia Djebar's books written in French and Algerian, was successfully defended.^[6][8]

Lutsyshyna received her training at Kraków's Jagiellonian University in 2012–2013. At the University of Georgia in 2014,^[6] she presented her PhD thesis defense on The Great Phantasmagoric Season: Bruno Schulz's Prose in Light of Walter Benjamin's Theories.^[5][4][9] She has been living and working in the US since 2001. He presently teaches Ukrainian language and literature (including translations and Eastern European literatures)^[10] as well as a course on Soviet-era cinema at the University of Texas at Austin.^[6][8]

Having studied and taught courses on various national traditions (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and French), critical theory, and social science, Lutsyshyna has a broad background in literature. She completed graduate studies in language teaching methods as well, but she decided to focus on literature instead of completing her doctorate. She teaches topic classes on women's writing, the literature of the area, and the changes that have occurred in post-Soviet cultures.^[5]

Career[edit]

The most prominent literary honors in Ukraine were given to Lutsyshyna's most recent book, Ivan and Phoebe (2019), in 2020 and 2021, respectively: the Taras Shevchenko National Prize in Fiction and the Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize. Deep Vellum Publishing published Nina Murray's English translation of the book in 2023. The English translation of her poetry book Persephone Blues was published by Arrowsmith in 2019. HURI Books will soon release the English translation of the author's second book, Love Life. Along with Olena Jennings, she also does English translations of Ukrainian writers.^[11] Her original poems and translations are included inside the Words for War collection, an anthology of English-language Ukrainian poetry that responds to the continuing conflict in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.^[9]

Works[edit]

Lutsyshyna's original writing has been published in Ukraine and consists of two novels, a collection of short tales, and three poetry collections. One of her book has been nominated for a Ukrainian BBC prize on the long list.^[6][12] She has written and published the following poetry and novels:^[10][13]

• Without Blushing (2007)
• The Sun Seldom Sets (2007)
• I Am Listening to the Song of America (2010)
• Love Life (2015)^[14]
• Felicity's Poems (2018)
• Ivan and Phoebe (2019)^[15]
• Persephone Blues (2019)^[16]
• Fulbright Award (2012)^[17]

Political positions[edit]

Lutsyshyna views feminism as an integral aspect of her personal philosophy. She perceives the essence of feminism as the act of exposing patriarchal ideology, which she believes to dehumanize individuals, particularly women, while asserting itself as the norm. In response to the common inquiry about the nature of feminism, she describes it as a radical assertion that women possess equal status to men.^[2]

Personal life[edit]

Lutsyshyna is from a family of philologists,^[3][18] and currently resides in Austin, Texas.^[9] Her early years were spent in the Lviv Oblast's city of Sambir, where her father's family—a native Galician—lived. She got married twice, and her first marriage produced a daughter named Lydia. Dan Belgrade, an American professor and instructor, is her husband from the second marriage.^[8]

Her area of interests are Ukrainian Modernism and applied linguistics, language teaching methods, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Bruno Schulz.^[5] Sports are one of the inclinations, especially Thai boxing. She had also been interested in Indonesian karate and kung fu for a while.^[8]

Awards and recognitions[edit]

Lutsyshyna has received awards and recognitions such as:^[10][19]

• Shevchenko National Prize (2021)^[15]
• The Lviv – UNESCO City of Literature Award (2020)^[15]
• Kovalevy Fund Award (2011)
• Blahovist Poetry Award (1998)
• Hranoslov Poetry Award (1996)

Notes[edit]

References[edit]