Ukraine, War, Love: Olena Stiazhkina and Dominique Hoffman on Writing and Translating War

Olena Stiazhkina

Ukrainian Writer, Journalist

A historian by training, Olena Stiazhkina is a prolific Ukrainian writer and journalist with numerous scholarly publications and eleven books of fiction. Until the occupation of the city of Donetsk, she taught Slavic history at the Vasyl Stus National University in Donetsk (1993–2015) and then at the Mariupol State University (2015–2016).  Her scholarly interests focus on women’s history, life in the Soviet Union, and the history of the Donbas. Since 2016, she has served as the senior research fellow at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.   Her works of fiction comprise collections of short stories, novels, and detective stories (under the pen name Olena Iurska). Having written almost exclusively in Russian before, Stiazhkina has been transitioning to writing in Ukrainian following the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014.  Most recent scholarly book: The Stigma of Occupation: Self-Perception of Soviet Women in the 1940s (in Ukrainian, 2019).  Most recent book of fiction: Cecil the Lion Had to Die (in Ukrainian; English translation forthcoming from Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in 2023).



Harvard is also publishing Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary in 2023.  In Ukraine, War, Love, Olena Stiazhkina depicts day-to-day developments in and around her beloved hometown during Russia’s 2014 invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.  An award-winning fiction writer, Stiazhkina brings a novelist’s sensibilities to bear on an increasingly harrowing series of events, chronicling them with sarcasm, anger, humor, and love.  In this personal account, she documents the first bloody chapter of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Dominique Hoffman

Translator

Dominique Hoffman holds a doctorate in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of North Carolina. She translates Ukrainian literary texts from both Ukrainian and Russian. (She is now studying Crimean Tatar, as well.) Her translation of Cecil the Lion Had to Die if forthcoming from Harvard Ukrainian Research Insitute.