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The University of Chichester has invited Ukrainian novelist Volodymyr Rafeienko to become a digital writer-in-residence.
Organised in partnership with the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Stephen Spender Trust, and supported through the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute, the residency will see Rafeienko share his experiences of the conflict with university students, and write dispatches from Ukraine.
The university will host a public talk with Rafeienko in spring 2023 in partnership with the Rathbones Folio Prize. His first essay for the residency can be read here.
Rafeienko, who cannot leave Ukraine due to its conscription laws, is a multi-award-winning author, who originates from Donetsk and is stationed in Ternopil, which was bombarded with missile strikes at the start of the war.
The two-time Russian Literary Prize winner said: “In times of peace and hours of war, literature retains its constant purpose. It is the means of re-creating and preserving the human in humanity. It’s harder to write in war, but that’s because living through war is also much harder.
“There are two important parts to the residency: the first is to write and work, perhaps to teach. Secondly, it gives me the chance to be heard by students, colleagues, people who are not indifferent to Ukraine and the problems of culture in Europe—that is, people who are open to understanding.”
His residency, hosted by the University of Chichester’s Humanities department, was organised by reader in creative writing Suzanne Joinson, a prize-winning novelist and non-fiction writer.
She said: “We are delighted to welcome Volodymyr to our university. As he cannot leave his country we have created remote ways of engaging that include video link-up events. He will meet masters and undergraduate creative writing and literature students to share ideas and thoughts on his essays and novels and writing in general.
“This is a unique residency and his incredible literary talent and passion for writing will prove inspirational not only for our students—who will learn directly from him—but anyone who has become engaged in Ukraine since the start of the devastating conflict.”