Iryna Shuvalova

Iryna Shuvalova was born in 1986 in Kyiv.[1] She studied at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.[2] In 2014, she completed MA in Comparative literature at Dartmouth College, followed by a PhD in 2020 in Slavonic studies at the University of Cambridge[1][3] on the topic of songs of the Russo-Ukrainian War created by affected local communities.[2][4] At Dartmouth she was a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, while at Cambridge she gained a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and taught Ukrainian.[1]

Shuvalova debuted in 2011 with her poetry book Ran.[5] Her fourth book, the bilingual publication Pray to the Empty Wells was strongly influenced by Ukrainian folk culture and nature.[4] Her poems have appeared in various anthologies and have been translated into nine languages.[1] In 2019, she was a coeditor of 120 pages of "Sodom": the first anthology of queer literature published in Ukraine.[1][2]

She works as a translator from English into Ukrainian[1] and from Ukrainian and Russian into English.[4] Shuvalova has translated, among others, Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2016) and Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (2019).[1][2] Her translations into English have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation and Words Without Borders.[4]

Shuvalova has received a number of awards for her own work as well as translation, including the first prize in the Smoloskyp Literary Competition in 2010[1][4] and the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize[1][2][5] for translating Sergei Chegra's poem The Prayer of the Touch.[5]

Shuvalova is a member of PEN Ukraine[2] and in 2017 became an expert on Ukrainian translations for the English PEN.[1]

• Ran[1][4]
• Os[1][4]
• Az[1][4]
• Pray to the Empty Wells - bilingual publication[1][4]
• Stoneorchardwoods[3]