Upcoming Event: Voices of Ukraine

Today was to be the opening of the 11th Book Arsenal Festival at Kyiv’s Mystetskyi Arsenal, the country’s flagship public cultural institution for contemporary visual art, music, theatre, and of course, literature. Despite the organizing committee’s evident dedication to the project, the event ultimately had to be cancelled in the face of Putin’s ongoing attack on Ukraine and its culture.

As we move into the fourth month of the conflict and atrocities only continue to mount, so too do global efforts to help Ukrainians preserve their culture and their voices. In this spirit we wish to highlight Voices of Ukraine: authors read from the literature of Ukraine, an evening of readings organized by The Guardian in partnership with Intelligence Squared. The event, which takes place this Friday, 27 May, 8-9pm BST (3-4pm EDT), and can be joined either in-person or via livestream, will feature readings by a variety of non-Ukrainian writers including Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ian McEwan, and Alice Oswald, who will read the work of their Ukrainian peers, as well as video recorded readings by Ukrainian poets Boris and Ludmilla Khersonsky, and a conversation with esteemed Ukrainian poet and academic Ostap Slyvynsky.

You can learn more about this important event and purchase tickets here.