Ukraine Writes Back: Fighting, Living, and Writing Inside the War

“Ukraine Writes Back: Writers, Poets and the War” is a series of four webinars co-hosted by the Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) at The University of Melbourne and the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (USAANZ).

This third webinar in the series brings together in conversation Viktoriia Grivina, Yaryna Chornoguz, and Iryna Skubii.

Fighting, living, and writing while being inside the war is the central theme of the third webinar in the series “Ukraine Writes Back: Writers, Poets, and the War.” Writers Yaryna Chornoguz and Viktoria Grivina, who have direct experience of living in Ukraine – whether on the frontlines or in Kharkiv, a city under daily bombardment – will reflect on their writing during the war. In conversation with Iryna Skubii, the inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Melbourne, they will read from their poetry and prose about frontline and occupied cities, landscapes of soil, rivers, and seas, the objects and dreams they hold onto, and the emotions and dangers of life amidst war’s atrocities.

Registration via link: https://unimelb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dSclfNsETAKpJXklvk-gzg

Friday 19 September 2025, 5:00pm AEST Melbourne
Friday 19 September 2025, 10:00am Kyiv
Friday 19 September 2025, 9:00am Warsaw/Berlin
Friday 19 September2025, 8:00am London

Viktoriia Grivina is a writer and cultural anthropologist from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She holds a Master’s degree in linguistics of Kharkiv National University, and MA in Cultural Studies via Erasmus Mundus Master’s Scholarship (at Tübingen, Bergamo and St Andrews universities). In 2020-21 she was an early career researcher at “(Un)Archiving (Post)Industry” Project, digitizing photographic legacy of Donbas, Ukraine. Her current PhD research at the University of St Andrews is dedicated to the transformation of cultural and aesthetic landscapes of Kharkiv during war. In 2024 she was short-listed for Creative Future non-fiction award and received first prize at Dream Foundry Fantastic Fiction competition. Her first book, an essay collection Kharkiv. A War City, is published in Spring 2025. She is also a co-author of Kharkiv Is a Dream: Public Art and Activism 2013–2023 with Hjørdis Clemmensen and Vasylysa Shchogoleva.

Yaryna Chornoguz is a Ukrainian poet, translator, civic activist, and active-duty service member, currently serving as a UAV operator in the Ukrainian Marine Corps. She began her military path in 2019 as a paramedic with the volunteer medical battalion Hospitallers and later signed a contract with the Marine Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For her service, she has been awarded the medals For Military Service to Ukraine and For a Saved Life. Alongside her military service, Yaryna is a prize-winning writer and translator. She graduated with a master’s degree in philosophy from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2019 and has participated in numerous poetry readings and competitions, including the Smoloskyp publishing prize. Her poetry collection [dasein: Defense of Presence] was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine, the country’s highest literary honour. She is the author of three poetry collections.

Iryna Skubii is the inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Melbourne. She holds two doctoral degrees in History (Queen’s University, Kingston, and V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University) and has held teaching and research positions in Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Austria, and Canada. She is the author of Trade in Kharkiv in the Years of NEP: Economy and Everyday Life (1921–1929). An award-winning historian, recognized in 2025 by the American Association for Ukrainian Studies for her article on food waste during the Soviet famines, she is currently writing on the global history of sunflowers in Ukraine and preparing book manuscripts on survival during the Soviet famines and on consumption in early Soviet Ukraine.