Irish PEN/ PEN na hÉreann presents …

Book Launch: Looking at Women, Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary by the late Victoria Amelina

Guest Speaker: Yaryna Grusha

Wednesday 30 July | 7pm | Free

Join the Ukranian writer, Yaryna Grusha and members of Irish PEN to celebrate the Northern Ireland launch of Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women, Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary (with a foreword by Margaret Atwood), which was published posthumously to critical widespread critical acclaim earlier this year.

Victoria Amelina was killed by a Russian missile in July, 2023. She was an award-winning Ukrainian novelist, essayist, poet and human rights activist whose prose and poems have been translated into many languages. She wrote both in Ukrainian and English, and her essays have appeared in Irish Times, Dublin Review of Books, and Eurozine

‘This book would always have been important evidence that the Ukraine people were suffering criminal attack. Written by a poet, it is also a work of literature, published after the author lost her life doing her research. It is an icon of a young woman’s heroism‘ Philippa Gregory.

The book will be launched by Yaryna Grusha, a Ukrainian writer, translator, and publicist who teaches Ukrainian language and literature at the Universities of Milan and Bologna. She co-curated and then translated Looking at Women, Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary into Italian for Guanda. She is currently working on her debut novel, The Album Blu. 

Yaryna’s talk will be followed by an interview with Liz McManus, Chair of Irish PEN and short readings from the book by Yaryna and members of Irish PEN in attendance.