Valeriy Shevchuk


Valeriy Oleksandrovych Shevchuk was a Ukrainian writer.

Life and career

Shevchuk was born on 20 August 1939 to a family of a shoemaker. In 1956, wanting to become a geologist, he applied to the Lviv Institute of Forestry but failed the entrance exam. After this he started working in a concrete factory. A year later, he started studying philology in Kyiv. After graduating, he started working in a newspaper called Young Guard as a correspondent.
Shevchuk published his first work, a story about Taras Shevchenko titled "Nastunka", in 1961.
Shevchuk died on 6 May 2025, at the age of 85.

Awards

Valeriy Shevchuk was an Honoured Professor of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and of the National University of Lviv. He was a laureate of the Antonovych Foundation Award and of other numerous literary awards. He is also an honored figure of Polish Culture. His works have been translated into 22 languages.
In 2011, Valeriy Shevchuk Prize was instituted by the Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University.

Notable works

  • “In the Midweek”
  • “The Esplanade 12”
  • “The Scream of the Rooster at Dawn”
  • “On a Humble Field”
  • “A House on a Mountain”
  • “Three Leaves Behind the Window”,
  • “The Thinking Tree”
  • “Birds from an Invisible Island”
  • “The Murrain”
  • “An Eternal Clock”
  • “The Woman of Flowers”
  • “The path in the Grass. The Zhytomyr Saga”
  • “Inside the Belly of an Apocalyptic Beast”
  • “Eye of the Abyss”
  • “The Snakewoman”
  • “Silver Milk”
  • “The Vanishing Shadows. A Family Chronicle.”
  • “The Cossack State: Studies to the History of Establishment of the Ukrainian State”
  • “The Roxelany Muse: the Ukrainian Literature of 16th to 18th Centuries in 2 Volumes”
  • “The Known and the Unknown Sphinx. Hryhorii Skovoroda in the Modern View”
He compiled several collections of love poetry of the 16th to 19th centuries and translated them into modern literary language, such as "Songs of Cupid" and heroic poetry of the 9th and 10th centuries “Field of Mars” in 2 volumes, “The Chronicle of Samiylo Velychko”, etc.

Publications in English

The Meek Shall Inherit.... Trans. by Viktoriia Kholmohorova. Kyiv: Dnipro Publishers, 1989.