Poetry collection by Halyna Kruk longlisted for the 2025 PEN America Literary Award

Poetry collection Lost in Living by Halyna Kruk was nominated for the PEN America Literary Awards in the Translated Poetry category. The collection was published by Lost Horse Press in 2024 (it is the 16th book in its series of contemporary Ukrainian poetry). The poems were translated from Ukrainian by Dzvina Orlovska and Ali Kinsella.

“Ali Kinsella and I are overjoyed and honored to have made this list alongside such brilliant poets and translators! Endless gratitude to the remarkable Halyna Kruk, our dedicated publisher, Lost Horse Press Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series and to judges Mungwwar Abdulla, Curtis Bauer, and Suzanne Jill Levine. Congratulations to all 2025 Pen nominees!” Dzvinia Orlowsky wrote in a post on her Facebook page.

“Lost in Living” presents Halyna Kruk’s unpublished work from the immediate “pre-invasion” years when life in Ukraine was marked by turmoil but full-scale war was not yet normalized. In these “dear poems that don’t pain [her] like those about the war do,” Kruk uses imagery and tone to underscore poetic agency, at times juxtaposing figurative language with a calm, direct voice to bring her poems to life. Nature cannot be relied on to sustain nor renew, and life is shown to be fundamentally vulnerable. “Calm” is a seductive state of mind capable of cunning, and the speaker is unable to find a place where she can thrive or grow. Still, daily tasks emerge as life-affirming and a welcome constant. It is ultimately a movement toward survival that drives the immediacy and urgency of Kruk’s poetry,” reads the annotation to the book.

Read the full list of 2025 nominees here.

PEN America is now the largest PEN community in the world.

The PEN America Literary Award for Poetry in Translation is an annual prize for book-length translations of poetry from any language into English. The prize of $3,000 has been awarded since 1996.

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Main image: Collage by Chytomo/Iryna Sereda, Local Story/Bookshop.org

Copy editing: Ben Angel