Victoria Amelina

Viktoriia Amelina (Ukrainian: Вікторія Амеліна; 1 January 1986 – 1 July 2023), later known as Victoria Amelina, was a Ukrainian novelist. She was the author of two novels and a children's book, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award[1] and a European Union Prize for Literature finalist.[2]

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming conventions, the patronymic is Amelina.

Victoria Amelina
Amelina in 2015
Amelina in 2015
Native name
Вікторія Амеліна
BornViktoriia Yuriivna Amelina
(1986-01-01)1 January 1986
Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Died1 July 2023(2023-07-01) (aged 37)
Dnipro, Ukraine
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • essayist
Literary movementMember of PEN International
Notable works
  • Fall Syndrome (2014)
  • Dom's Dream Kingdom (2017)
Notable awards

Early life and education

Victoria Amelina was born in Lviv. She emigrated to Canada with her father at the age of fourteen, then returned to Ukraine soon after.[3] At age 15, she was chosen to represent Lviv at a Russian-language contest in Moscow.[4] After completing a degree in computer science in Lviv,[5] Amelina started her career in IT before becoming a full-time writer and poet in 2015.[6]

Writing

From 2015, when her first book Синдром листопаду, або Homo Compatiens (The Fall Syndrome: about, or Homo Compatiens) was published, she dedicated her time solely to writing. Her debut novel deals with the events at Maidan in 2014; the foreword was written by Yurii Izdryk. The novel has received several literary awards, and was welcomed by critics and scholars from Ukraine and wider Europe.[7][8]

In 2016, Amelina published a book for children called Хтось, або водяне серце (Somebody, or Water Heart).[5]

In 2017, she published a novel, Дім для Дома[5] (Dom's Dream Kingdom), about the family of a Soviet colonel who in the 1990s lived in the former childhood apartment in Lviv of the Polish Jewish author Stanisław Lem.[9][10] The novel was short-listed for the LitAkcent literary award in 2017.[9] and European Union Prize for Literature in 2019.[11] In 2023 Amelina was offered a UK publishing deal for the book.[12]

Amelina was a member of PEN International. In 2018, she took part in 84th World PEN Congress in India as a delegate from Ukraine and gave a speech on Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner in Russia Oleg Sentsov.[13] In 2021 she received the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize.[14] That same year, she started a literature festival in the Donetsk region.[14]

In 2022, she started writing poetry as well.[15] She explained her motivations for this, saying ""That's what war leaves you. The sentences are as short as possible, the punctuation a redundant luxury, the plot unclear, but every word carries so much meaning. All this applies to poetry as well as to war".[16] Her prose and poems have been translated into numerous other languages.[5]

In June 2023 Amelina was awarded a yearlong residency in Paris for displaced Ukrainian writers.[17] She planned to use the residency to finish her most recent book, Looking at Women Looking at War, described as "a diary of about a dozen women, including [herself], pursuing justice".[12][17] She was killed before her residency started.[17]

Wartime work

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, she worked as a war crimes researcher for Truth Hounds, a Ukrainian organization.[18][19][17] She used her training as a novelist to interview witnesses.[17]

In September 2022, while doing research in the Izium region, she uncovered the war diary of fellow Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who had been killed by the occupying forces in March 2022.[17][20] In May 2023, Vakulenko received a posthumous award from the International Publishers Association, which Amelina accepted on his behalf.[17]

Amelina also hosted internally displaced Ukrainians and helped to deliver humanitarian aid in Lviv.[17]

Personal life and death

Amelina had a son in the early 2010s.

As of 2022, Amelina lived in Kyiv.[18] In June 2023, after receiving a residency in Paris, Amelina considered moving there with her 12-year-old son.[17]

On 27 June 2023, she was injured during the Russian attack on Kramatorsk while she was dining at RIA Pizza together with Héctor Abad, Sergio Jaramillo and Catalina Gómez. The restaurant was hit by an Iskander missile.[21][22] Amelina died due to her injuries on 1 July at the Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro at the age of 37.[23][24] She was buried in Lviv.[17]

Bibliography
  • «Синдром листопаду, або Homo Compatiens, The Fall Syndrome or Homo Compatiens» (Discursus, 2014)[25] ISBN 9786177236091
  • «Синдром листопаду, або Homo Compatiens, The Fall Syndrome or Homo Compatiens» (Віват, 2015)[25] ISBN 9786176901716
  • «Хтось, Або Водяне Серце, Somebody or Waterheart» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2016)[25] ISBN 9788771270372
  • «Дім для Дома, Dom's Dream Kingdom» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2017)[25] ISBN 9786176794165
  • «Е-е-есторії екскаватора Еки, Stories of Eka the Excavator» [Архівовано 28 липня 2021 у Wayback Machine.] (Львів: Видавництво Старого Лева, 2021)[25] ISBN 978-617-679-924-5.

Anthologies
  • «Це зробила вона, She Did It» (Видавництво «Видавництво», 2017)[25]
  • «Лялька, Doll» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2018)[25]
  • «Мости замість стін, Bridges Instead of Walls» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2020)[25]
  • «Що дасть нам силу?, What Gives Us Strength» (Дух і літера, 2020)[25]
  • «Ковчег „Титанік". 20 есеїв про людство зразка 2020–го, The Arc Called Titanic. 20 Essays on Humanity of 2020» (онлайн-антологія 27 Bookforum, 2020)[25]

References
  1. "The Conrad Literary Award granted by the Polish Institute in Kyiv". The Polish Book Institute. 17 December 2021.
  2. "Eurozine". 31 March 2022.
  3. "Colgate Mourns Death of Ukrainian Writer Victoria Amelina | Colgate University". www.colgate.edu. 7 July 2023. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  4. Amelina, Victoria (6 July 2023). "Victoria Amelina: Ukraine and the meaning of home". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  5. "Amelina Victoria". PEN Ukraine. April 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2023.
  6. "Victoria Amelina, war crimes researcher, killed in missile attack". www.aljazeera.com. 3 July 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
  7. "Eastern partnership literary review 2015/ 2". Issuu.com. 16 March 2016. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  8. "Empathy – the only thing that will save us : anthropology of Homo Compatiens in the novel of Victoria Amelina". Aesthetic-potential.com. 1 December 2015. Archived from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  9. Szablatura, Martin. "Victoria Amelina: Pouze literatura | MAČ2017". brno.mac365.cz (in Czech). Retrieved 10 May 2019.
  10. "Wrocław in the City of Lem. The beginning of an international seminar". Wroclaw2016.pl. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  11. "EUPL 2019 shortlisted candidates — European Union Prize for Literature". euprizeliterature.eu. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  12. Higgins, Charlotte (14 July 2023). "Stalin erased one generation of Ukraine's artists. Now Putin is killing another – including my friend". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  13. ""The stories win people's minds, not bullets": Victoria Amelina's speech about the trial of Sentsov at the 84th PEN Congress in Pune". PEN Ukraine. 29 September 2018. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  14. Vinograd, Cassandra (3 July 2023). "Ukrainian Writer Victoria Amelina Dies After Kramatorsk Strike". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  15. Higgins, Charlotte (9 December 2022). "For Ukrainians, poetry isn't a luxury, it's a necessity during war". The Guardian.
  16. Simon, Scott (8 July 2023). "Opinion: Remembering Ukrainian poet Victoria Amelina". NPR. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  17. Kakissis, Joanna; Harbage, Claire; Palamarenko, Hanna (15 July 2023). "She saved the diary of a Ukrainian writer killed by Russia. Then she was killed, too". NPR. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
  18. Devlin, Martina (21 October 2022). "An unshakable resolve persists in Ukraine, says Kyiv writer Victoria Amelina as she shares horrific war truths". independent. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  19. Giovanni, Janine di (22 October 2022). "The Defiance of Celebrating Literature in the Midst of War". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  20. Duggan, Keith (25 March 2023). "Uncovering the buried diary of an executed Ukrainian writer". The Irish Times.
  21. "Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina in hospital after Kramatorsk missile strike". Yahoo! News. 29 June 2023.
  22. Graham-Harrison, Emma (30 June 2023). "Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina critically injured in Kramatorsk strike". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  23. "Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer, and our dearest colleague, passed away". PEN Ukraine. 2 July 2023.
  24. "Ukrainian writer dies after Kramatorsk strike". BBC News. 2 July 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
  25. "Amelina Victoria". PEN Ukraine. 1 April 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2023.
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