This is the first volume of a six-volume series entitled Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature. The purpose of the series is to make the short fiction of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ukrainian women writers - early feminists and social activists - accessible to readers of English. The works selected range from vignettes and sketches to novelettes, and together they constitute a compelling social history of an era during which the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble, wreaking havoc with personal and societal relations. What these authors had in common was an appreciation of the power of literature as a vehicle of social and political activism, and a commitment t o the amelioration of the position of women. Their exploration of gender issue s cuts across ethnic and social divisions, describes the often devastating consequences of social conditioning, and documents both the promise and the human cost of change. The translation of these works permits the message of these women to transcend temporal, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. The first author in Volume I, Olena Pchilka (1849-1930), herself a mother and grandmother from the upper echelons of society, challenged deeply ingrained norms governing the status of women in society, particularly among the privileged and the intellegentsia, and she did so with a tongue-in-cheek humour that makes her writing as delightful as it is informative and purposeful. The second author, Nataliya Kobrynska (1855-1920), was a leading theoretician of feminist thought whose concerns cut across what she saw as the artificial and divisive boundaries of social class. Her husband was as dedicated to the feminist cause as she was, and the couple devoted themselve s to raising the social and political consciousness of women. They urged women of privilege to convince their peasant sisters of the desirability and possibility of social change, established daycare centres and communal kitchens, organized reading circles, and fought for high schools for girls and universal suffrage. Kobrynska was a powerful writer, and her fiction presents a poignantly accurate picture of the social conditions of her day and their devastating effect on women.

The Spirit of the Times: Selected Short Fiction by Olena Pchilka and Nataliya Kobrynska (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. I)

Kobrynska, Nataliya

Pchilka, Olena

Language Lanterns Publications

This is the second volume of a six-volume series entitled Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature. The purpose of the series is to make the short fiction of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ukrainian women writers - early feminists and social activists - accessible to readers of English. The works selected range from vignettes and sketches to novelettes, and together they constitute a compelling social history of an era during which the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble, wreaking havoc with personal and societal relations. 
 What these authors had in common was an appreciation of the power of literature as a vehicle of social and political activism, and a commitment to the amelioration of the position of women. Their exploration of gender issues cuts across ethnic and social divisions, describes the often devastating consequences of social conditioning, and documents both the promise and the human cost of change. The translation of these works permits the message of these women to transcend temporal, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. 
 The first author, Dniprova Chayka (1861-1927), wrote her short stories under the influence of populism, and they belong to the ethnographic-realistic school of literature. Her publications aroused the ire of the authorities, m any of her manuscripts were confiscated, and some came to light only recently. 
 The writing of the second author, Lyubov Yanovska (1861-1933), reflects her deep understanding of and compassion for both the peasantry and the intellegentsia of her time, each caught in the debilitating mores and social structures of their separate worlds. Her works bridge the ethnographic-realistic and the newer modernistic-psychological movement.

In the Dark of the Night: Selected Short Fiction (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. 2)

Yanovska, Lyubov

Book by Olha Kobylianska, Yevheniya Yaroshynska

But... The Lord is Silent: Selected Prose Fiction by Olha Kobylianska and Yevheniya Yaroshynska (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature Vol. III)

Olha Kobylianska

Yevheniya Yaroshynska

This is the fourth volume of a six-volume series entitled Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature. The purpose of the series is to make the short fiction of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ukrainian women writers - early feminists and social activists - accessible to readers of English. The works selected range from vignettes and sketches to novelettes, and together they constitute a compelling social history of an era during which the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble, wreaking havoc with personal and societal relations. 
What these authors had in common was an appreciation of the power of literature as a vehicle of social and political activism, and a commitment to the amelioration of the position of women. Their exploration of gender issues cuts across ethnic and social divisions, describes the often devastating consequences of social conditioning, and documents both the promise and the human cost of change. The translation of these works permits the message of these women to transcend temporal, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. 
The first author in Volume IV, Oleksandra Sudovshchykova-Kosach (1867 - 1924), is known by her male literary pseudonym, Hrytsko Hryhorenko. She was born in northern Russia, where her parents had been exiled in 1866 for their involvement in Ukrainian organizations. The father died in 1868, and the infant Oleksandra and her mother were allowed to return to Kyiv. After completing high school, Oleksandra joined the Pleyada [The Pleaides], a literary circle promoting Ukrainian literature and introducing Ukrainian readers to foreign authors, and wrote poetry in Ukrainian, Russian and French. In 1893, she married Mykhaylo Kosach, who moved to Estonia to escape political persecution. Oleksandra began writing prose fiction, and in 1898 she published her first collection of realistic ethnographic narratives about peasant life. After Kosach's death in 1903, the young widow and her daughter lived with the Kosach family while Oleksandra completed a law degree. Writing in a modern, impressionistic style, she broadened her themes to include stories about the intelligentsia, and explored the concept of psychological individualism. The greater part of her literary legacy consists of works documenting the harsh conditions and moral decay of peasant life at the turn of the century, and to detailing the desperate measures to which the peasants, especially the women, were driven by adversity. She wrote with such brutal honesty that critics and readers of her day accused her of dwelling solely on the dark side of life. Her later writing, in which she examined the impact of technological and social change on individuals from all levels of society, was no less moving and candid. 
The second author is Lesya Ukrainka (1871 - 1913), the literary pseudonym of Larysa Kosach-Kvitka. Her parents were Olha Drahomanova-Kosach (literary pseudonym: Olena Pchilka), a writer in Eastern Ukraine, and Petro Kosach, a senior civil servant. In addition to Ukrainian, Larysa learned Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, and English. She began writing poetry at the age of nine, and at 13 saw her first poem published under the name Lesya Ukrainka. When she was seventeen, she and her brother organized a literary circle called Pleyada [The Pleiades] to promote Ukrainian literature and translate classics into Ukrainian. Lesya published her first collection of lyrical poetry, On Wings of Songs, in 1893, a year after her translations of Heine's poetry, The Book of Songs, appeared. Ukrainian publications were banned in the Russian Empire so both books were published in Western Ukraine and smuggled into Kyiv. Ukrainka wrote epic poems, prose dramas, prose, literary criticism, and sociopolitical essays. In her dramatic poems, her greatest legacy to Ukrainian literature, she developed the themes of national freedom, dignity, and personal integrity, and called on people the world over to throw off the yoke of oppression. In 1907, she married the ethnographer and musicologist Klyment Kvitka. Upon her death at 42 after a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis of the bone, Ukrainka left behind a rich and diversified literary legacy. While it is the deep philosophical thought and the perfection of her poetic form that have assured her place in world literature, her prose works provide a fascinating insight into the inner life of this gifted, multifaceted writer, and reveal her perceptions of the multi-layered society in which she lived.

From Heart to Heart: Selected Prose Fiction by Hrytsko Hryhorenko and Lesya Ukrainka (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. IV)

Hrytsko Hryhorenko

Lesya Ukrainka

Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature 
The turn of a century marks a pause in time-a pause that impels us to take stock, to assess the extent and significance of social changes, and make sense of our collective and individual experience. When the end of a century coincides with the millennium, this need to engage in retrospective analyses is intensified. 
The purpose of this series is to make accessible to English readers the selected works of Ukrainian women writers. The works selected range from vignettes and sketches, to novelettes and novels. Together they constitute an unsystematic but compelling social history of a period when the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble as the political and ideological cataclysms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries wreaked havoc with time-honoured personal and societal relations. History provides us with a temporal account of the past, but it is literature that gives it a human face 
Each of Volumes I to IV features the writings of two authors and comprises a broad array of subject matter This volume, drawing on the writings of six of these authors, is an anthology of stories that illuminate the lives of children and adolescents in the class society of the day, a society in which people were rigidly divided into the powerful and the oppressed, the privileged and the poor, and the educated and the ignorant. Children were born into the status of their parents, and it was this status that constrained the interplay between inherited characteristics and culture, and determined how individual lives would play themselves out. Vertical mobility was not a social value, and although issues of justice and fairness tormented the odd adolescent, maturity was expected to bring with it an unquestioning acceptance of one's fate. 
 While not equally talented or skilled, what the authors have in common is an appreciation of the power of literature as a vehicle of social activism, and collectively they document the debilitating social structures and mores of the separate worlds of the peasantry and the privileged, address matters of gender that cut across ethnic and social divisions, and explore the power and often devastating consequences of social conditioning Moreover, whatever the subject matter, they observe and interpret experience from a female perspective and demonstrate a keen sensitivity to both the promise and human cost of change. 
Their voices are loud and strong, what they have to say is worth hearing, and their impact should not be confined to one time or place. Translating their stories into English permits their message to transcend temporal, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. 
The process of translation, in and of itself a formidable undertaking, was compounded, in the case of some of the earlier works, by archaic forms of Ukrainian; late-nineteenth century stylistic conventions, paragraphing, and punctuation; texts that varied with the era in which they were published; vexing problems of transliteration; and the fact that a number of the works had never undergone a judicious editing Ultimately, it was the criterion of readability that informed the many and difficult decisions that had to be made. 
A biographical sketch about each author anchors her writings in a social and historical context. No other analyses are provided; the works are allowed to speak for themselves.

Warm the Children, O Sun (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. V)

Kobylianska, Olha

About the Author The seven authors featured in this volume are: Nataliya Kobrynska(1855-1920), Olena Pchilka( 1849-1930), Lyubov Yanovska(1861-1933), Olha Kobylianska( 1863-1942),Yevheniya Yaroshynska(1868-1904),Hrytsko Hryhorenko(1849-1930), and Lesya Ukrainka( 1871-1913).

For a Crust of Bread: Selected Prose Fiction by Pchilka, Kobrynska, Yanovska, Kobylianska, Yaroshynska, Hryhorenko, and Ukrainka (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. VI)

Short stories by Anatoliy Dimarov translated into English from Ukrainian by Roma Franko and edited by Sonia Morris. Seven contemporary, psychologically astute stories laced with an acerbic humor explore the theme - Transitions, choices, and turning points: coming of age in Soviet Ukraine.

Broken Wings (Ukrainian Short Fiction in English)

Dimarov, Anatoliy

The theme of this book of Ukrainian short fiction translated into English is the terror-famine that ravaged Soviet Ukrainian territories in the early 1930s. 
Intended for the general reader, A Hunger Most Cruel features selected works by three authors whose unflinching honesty and complementary perspectives on the horrific events around which their narratives are constructed create a compelling set of vivid, disturbing, and haunting images of the human toll that this ideologically motivated artificial famine exacted.

A Hunger Most Cruel: The Human Face of the 1932-1933 Terror-Famine in Soviet Ukraine

Anatoliy Dimarov

Yevhen Hutsalo

Olena Zvychayna

Riddles of the Heart (Ukrainian Male Authors, 1880-1920)

Ivan Franko

Mykola Chernyavsky

Hnat Khotkevych

Mykhaylo Kotsyubynsky

Volodymyr Vynnychenko

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