Winner of the Ukrainian Institute London Translation Prize Announced

Daisy Gibbons has been awarded the Ukrainian Literature in Translation Prize by the Ukrainian Institute London. This was reported on the Institute’s website.

She received the award for her translation of Olha Matsiupa’s play Pilates Time and extracts from Artem Chekh’s wartime diaries.

“I’m so pleased that my translations are liked enough to have won an award. But what would please me more is to see additional literature by Ukrainian female playwrights, by Chekh and frontline soldiers, making it into English print soon. So much of our knowledge about Ukraine is informed by work by foreigners about Ukraine, or by Ukrainians for a foreign audience. If we want to speak with Ukrainians on their own terms, we should read work originally written for Ukrainians, which can let us read through Ukrainian eyes (if with English-translation glasses),” said Daisy Gibbons.

The theme of this year’s Ukrainian Institute London Prize was prose and poetry about Russia’s war against Ukraine. The panel of judges included poet Sasha Dugdale, writer and translator Halyna Hryn, Slavic professor Uilleam Blacker, and translator and poet Nina Murray.

Uilleam Blacker noted: “The winning texts, translated by Daisy Gibbons, represent two of Ukraine’s finest contemporary literary voices. Artem Chekh’s diaries of his army service are clear-eyed, ironic and skeptical, yet also deeply emotionally involved. Olha Matsiupa’s play is a strange, experimental, oblique look at the war.”

The Ukrainian Institute London is an independent charity that champions Ukrainian culture and shapes the conversation about Ukraine in the UK and beyond.

Read also: July’s Digest: festivals to be back, 607 destroyed libraries and Germany’s Support

Image: ukrainianinstitute.org.uk