Description: Russia’s war against Ukraine is perhaps the most documented war in history. Multiple personal accounts of war experience allow everyone around the globe to witness the trauma and resilience of Ukrainian people. Oksana Maksumchuk’s debut English-language poetry collection Still City: A Diary of an Invasion offers an immersive chronicle of war during the months leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. This is an intimate diary of a mother preparing herself and her family for an imminent invasion of her country. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including social media posts, news reports, witness accounts, recorded oral histories, photographs, drone video footage, intercepted communication, official documents, and songs, Maksymchuk’s poems document and reflect on the experiences of civilians in real time whilst also creating a multivocal celebration of the resilience of community and family in the face of catastrophe.
Bio: Please join us in the conversation with Oksana Maksymchuk, a bilingual Ukrainian American poet, scholar, and translator. She is the author of poetry collections Still City: A Diary of an Invasion (Carcanet Press, 2024) in English as well as Xenia and Lovy in Ukrainian. She coedited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry, and has published a few single-author volumes of translations. Born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine in 1982, she currently teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.
