Writer — publisher — reader
The books of the winners of this year’s Coronation of the Word have been published
On December 18, the National Lesia Ukrainka Theater of Russian Drama hosted a literary competition, Coronation of the Word, which gathered young and experienced authors, publishers, book distributors, and artists. The reason why this was done is publication of the novels of this year’s competition winners (over 70 have been printed since the publication of the first work). These are Half an Apple by Halyna Vdovychenko, Milk and Blood by Luko Dashvar, The Etymology of Blood by Anna Bahriana, A Bloody Autumn in the City of Lion by Natalka and Oleksandr Shevchenko, and Chess for Dummies by Mukhailo Brynnykh. “Before writing the prize-winning book The Etymology of Blood (it won three awards: the Oles Honchar Prize, a citation from the Smoloskyp publishing house, and a Coronation prize as such - Ed.), I used to write poetry and even publish books,” Anna Bahriana says, “but as those collections of poetry came out at my own expense, they got a very lukewarm welcome. And now that the Fact publishing house has printed the novel, which one can soon buy in bookstores and for which I receive my first fee, I suddenly realized that I had become a true writer! I will say frankly: this prompts me to write on.”
“Our writers were not allowed to say the whole truth for many decades,” says Yurii Lohush, general manager of Craft Foods Ukraine. “And now, whenever some talented prose writers emerge, you can feel as if they radiate a powerful light which accumulates the energy of what they lived through but not spoke out. This is obviously the continuity of generations. We, competition organizers, will continue discovering interesting names and publish new works, thus filling the national book market with competitive literature and building a bridge between the Ukrainian writer, publisher, and reader.”
This was a low-key event, with a miraculous atmosphere which occurs when you are waiting for good friends to visit you. Apparently to support the Ukrainian book, the competition was visited by the Okean Elzy front man Sviatoslav Vakarchuk. The theater’s new stage showed a spectacle of which the audience was an integral part, too. The authors and the stage director Serhii Arkhypchuk, together with the actors and musicians, were presenting the published novels in an original way — through music, drama, dancing and singing. This was sort of a reading feast on the eve of St. Nicholas’ Day. Incidentally, this event also awarded a prize to The Day, as the competition’s informational partner, for supporting modern Ukrainian literature.
Unfortunately, there are too few rich people in Ukraine today, who are concerned about the Ukrainian book instead of caring about their own yachts, airplanes, and villas,” says Oleksandr Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Association of Publishers and Book Distributors. “For example, the general manager of Craft Foods Ukraine is a US Ukrainian. I strongly hope that among those whom our soil raised there will be people who will follow the example of this wonderful couple — Tetiana and Yurii Lohush. For, in the present-day conditions, the national publisher is impoverished, as is, after all, the author. We need support from art patrons, if we want new interesting authors to appear and modern national literature to develop.”
