Lviv BookForum

Belim’s moving memoir The Rooster House: A Ukrainian Family Memoir is a tale of identity and post-Soviet reality told across four generations, as a young woman searches for traces of her great-uncle who disappeared during the 1930s. Kevin Jared Hosein, winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2018, is author of Hungry Ghosts, a novel about violence, religion, family and class, rooted in the wild and pastoral landscape of 1940s colonial central Trinidad. Both use writing to deal with complicated issues linked with identity, colonialism and class struggles. They talk to Rosie Goldsmith, journalist and Director of the European Literature Network.

Ukrainian writers currently experiencing the war in Ukraine first-hand and grappling with its impact, meaning and consequences discuss how you begin to process and write about the devastation conflict brings. Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer who heads the non-profit organization Centre for Civil Liberties that was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. Halyna Kruk is a poet, fiction writer and scholar of Ukrainian medieval literature, who has authored four books of poetry and collected some of Ukraine’s top awards for young poets. Serhiy Zhadan is a poet, writer, translator and winner of last year’s European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Literature Prize for his novel The Orphanage. They talk to Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor of The TLS.

Six-member ska ensemble Zhadan and the Dogs is a band that defines the musical scene of Eastern Ukraine. Their two-decade long career includes two acclaimed studio albums. Join them for a night of dance, good music and songs that will make you think and feel.