Yuliya Musakovska (born July 9, 1982, Lviv, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian poet and translator. She is the author of poetry collections such as “Exhaling, Inhaling” (2020), “Masks” (2011), “Hunting for Silence” (2014), “Men, Women and Children,” and “The God of Freedom,” as well as two poetry chapbooks released in Poland and Sweden. Her poems have been translated into over thirty languages and widely published across the globe.
She has received numerous literature awards, including the prestigious Smoloskyp Prize for young authors (2010) and the DICTUM Prize, awarded by the Krok Publishing House (2014). Musakovska has participated in numerous festivals and cultural events in Ukraine and abroad. She is also a member of PEN Ukraine.
Biography
Yuliya Musakovska was born in Lviv in 1982, where she lives and works. In 2005, she received a master's degree in international affairs from Lviv National University. Since 2007, she has been working in the IT industry in the field of marketing and communications. She is a frequent speaker at professional events and a guest lecturer at the Lviv Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University.
Musakovska has participated in literature festivals in Ukraine and abroad, including BookForum, Meridian Czernowitz, Book Arsenal, Book Space, Air Fest (Ukraine); Kaunas Literature Week (Lithuania), Katowice Jazz Art Festival (Poland), Author’s Reading Month (Czech Republic), Mediterranean Literature Festival (Malta), Norwegian Literature Festival, Oslo International Poetry Festival, Akerselva Literature Festival (Norway), and Poetry Africa (South Africa).
Literary work
The first larger selection of Musakovska's poems appeared in the Kyiv Rus literary journal in September 2008. Her work has been published in major Ukrainian magazines including Zolota Doba (Golden Age), Chetver (Thursday), Berezil, Kuryer Kryvbasu (Courier of Kryvbas), and RADAR, as well as in numerous anthologies.
Her debut poetry collection was published in 2010 by the Fakt publishing house in Kyiv. In the same year, Musakovska won several literary awards in Ukraine, including the prominent Smoloskyp Poetry Prize for young authors, which led to the publishing of her collection “Masks” in 2011. Later she received the DICTUM Prize from the Krok Publishing House, which resulted in the publication of her third poetry collection, “Hunting for Silence,” in 2014.
In 2015, The Old Lion Publishing House released her book of poetry, “Men, Women and Children,” featuring artwork by the Agrafka Art Studio. The following year, the collection won the Best Design of the Year award at the Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv.
In 2021, Musakovska's book “The God of Freedom” was published. This poetry collection was included in PEN Ukraine's 2021 Best Books list and the 2021 New Books From Ukraine catalogue comprising the books recommended for translation by the Ukrainian Book Institute.
Musakovska’s works were published in the following anthologies in English:
The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets: An Anthology (A Bilingual Edition), Glagoslav Publications, 2017; Letters from Ukraine: Poetry Anthology, Krok, 2016; New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City, Academic Studies Press, 2019; Voice of Freedom: Contemporary Writing from Ukraine, 8th & Atlas Publishing, 2022; In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, Arrowsmith Press, 2023
Translations
Yuliya Musakovska's poems have been translated into more than thirty languages, including English, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Georgian, Maltese, Hebrew, Malayalam, and Chinese. Her work has been widely published in literary periodicals, anthologies, and online publications abroad.
In 2022, her bilingual collection [Залізо/Żelazo] “Iron,” with a translation into Polish by Aneta Kaminska, was released by the Borderland Foundation in Poland.
American historian Timothy Snyder translated Musakovska's poem about Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, written in March 2022, [Такі незручні, такі страшні вірші…] “Such problematic, such frightful poems,” and recited it in the Lecture 22 of his course on Ukrainian history for Yale University, “The Making of Modern Ukraine,” which has received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Professor Snyder also published his translation of this poem and his thoughts about it in his blog on Substack.
In 2023, Musakovska's collection [Stenar och spik] “Stones and Nails,” translated by Mikael Nydahl, was released in Sweden in collaboration between the publishers ellerstroms and Ariel.