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Evgenia Lopata, Andriy Lyubka – Editors
Yulia Lyubka, Kate Tzurkan – Translators

Meridian Czernowitz – Publisher
Language of translation: English

This anthology brings together 35 powerful texts by some of Ukraine’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, offering an unflinching account of the first year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Through essays, reflections, and personal testimonies, the contributors confront the brutality of war with honesty and moral clarity, preserving the lived experiences of those who witnessed its earliest and most devastating stages. The collection affirms the enduring power of truth and memory, ensuring that the realities of this war are neither forgotten nor diminished over time. It speaks not only to the tragedy of conflict, but also to the painful necessity of resistance in defence of home, dignity, and freedom.

The book is the result of a major initiative by Meridian Czernowitz Publishing House aimed at supporting Ukraine’s literary community in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. By commissioning texts, the project provided direct financial assistance to 100 Ukrainian authors during an exceptionally difficult period. 

The anthology has played an important role in bringing Ukrainian voices to a global readership, with additional editions published in Latvian and Lithuanian and a German translation forthcoming. The foreword, written by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, underscores the historical significance of the collection and has further amplified its international impact.

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Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s 

Kateryna Zarembo – Author
Tetiana Savchynska – Translator

Publisher: Choven Publishing House / Academic Studies Press
Language of translation: English

In Ukrainian Sunrise, Kateryna Zarembo offers a nuanced and deeply researched portrait of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk before Russia’s 2014 invasion. Based on extensive fieldwork, repeated journeys, and interviews with local residents, the book challenges simplified and often distorted narratives that have long dominated media and political discourse. Zarembo reveals a region far more complex, diverse, and rooted in Ukrainian civic and cultural life than commonly portrayed.

The book opens with a critical examination of the very concept of “Donbas,” tracing how Soviet ideology reduced the region to a narrowly defined industrial myth. Zarembo demonstrates how this narrative erased entire communities, marginalized rural populations, and misrepresented linguistic realities. She dismantles the notion that the region was inherently Russian-speaking or predisposed to separatism, arguing instead that these ideas were artificially constructed and later weaponized by Moscow and local political elites.

Subsequent chapters explore the vibrant civic and cultural life that flourished in eastern Ukraine prior to the invasion. Zarembo documents grassroots organizations such as the Donetsk-based group Poshtovkh (“Impulse”), which played a key role in the Ukrainian cultural revival of the early 2000s. She highlights how artists, writers, musicians, and theatre practitioners formed underground cultural networks that resisted both Soviet legacies and political repression. The book also traces the region’s European influences from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing historical ties to Belgian, German, French, and British communities that shaped its development.

Zarembo further examines the overlooked role of villages as carriers of Ukrainian identity and explores the religious diversity of the region, including Protestant, Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Muslim communities, many of which re-emerged following Ukraine’s independence after decades of Soviet persecution. The book concludes by underscoring the civic engagement of youth movements and football fan communities, whose activism became instrumental in defending Ukraine’s democratic values.

Since 2024, Kateryna Zarembo has served as a combat medic with the Hospitaliers Medical Battalion, continuing to travel to Donetsk and Luhansk regions—now on the frontlines of the very history she so powerfully documents. Her work stands as both a scholarly contribution and a testament to the lived realities of Ukraine’s eastern regions, offering essential context for understanding the roots of Russia’s aggression and the resilience of Ukrainian society.

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Author: Matthew Green
Translator: Iryna Reformator
Translation: English to Ukrainian 

Aftershock follows the journey of veterans as they return from the battlefield into civilian life, exploring the hidden wounds of war—psychological trauma, moral injury, and the struggle to heal. Green presents vivid narratives of ex-servicemen and women whose return is marked by anguish, guilt, and dislocation, set against the broader evolution of military psychiatry from “shell shock” to modern PTSD. Through rigorous research and empathetic storytelling, Aftershock asks what it means “to survive peace” and calls for a more compassionate response to the long, often invisible cost of war.

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Author: Iryna Vilde
Translator: Ali Kinsella
Translation: Ukrainian to English

Butterflies Under Glass by Iryna Vilde is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story set in a diverse Ukraine on the brink of change. With warmth and psychological depth, Vilde follows a young girl’s journey toward self-understanding amid friendship, pain, and hope. Her prose recalls the emotional intensity of Elena Ferrante, yet it remains distinctly Ukrainian in its vision of independence and resilience. Long cherished at home, Butterflies Under Glass now reaches English readers as a rediscovered classic of world literature.

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Author: Alex Averbuch
Translator: Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky
Translation: Ukrainian to English 

This volume presents the first standalone English translations of a selection of poems by Alex Averbuch, drawn from his acclaimed collection The Jewish King (Kyiv, 2021), which was shortlisted for Ukraine’s Shevchenko National Prize. Averbuch’s work examines the region’s layered history—war, occupation, oppression, displacement—through the lens of personal and family stories. Many poems are rooted in archival “found texts”: letters from Ostarbeiters and Holocaust survivors, preserved in their original dialect and orthographic irregularities, creating a powerful, haunting “poetry of memory.” The volume’s final cycle confronts the current Russo-Ukrainian war, especially in Averbuch’s native Luhansk region, bearing witness to destruction, displacement, and resilience in the present day.

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Author: Philippe de Lara
Translator: Dmytro Karatieiv
Translation: French to Ukrainian

Naissances du totalitarisme by Philippe de Lara offers a profound exploration of the origins and evolution of totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Through an analysis of communist, fascist, and Nazi revolutions, de Lara reveals how political violence and systems of control take root and sustain themselves. His study sheds light on the mechanisms of fear, propaganda, and conformity that enable such regimes to flourish—and ultimately collapse.

For Ukraine, a nation that endured Soviet totalitarianism and now faces renewed authoritarian aggression, this book carries urgent relevance. It serves as both a historical reflection and a warning, deepening understanding of how democracy can be defended against its most dangerous enemies. 

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Author: Volodymyr Rafeyenko
Translator: Mark Andryczyk
Translation: Ukrainian to English 

Petrichor: The Scent of the Earth After Rain by Volodymyr Rafeyenko is a profound meditation on war, memory, and the fragile boundary between life and death. Set amid Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine, the novel traces the intertwined lives of two families whose worlds are shattered and remade by violence. Maria, whose son Petro is born on the day the war in Donbas begins, searches for stability across cities and borders, while Viktor, a refugee from Donetsk, must again confront invasion and terror near Kyiv.

Through their intersecting journeys, Rafeyenko explores how the living and the dead remain bound by memory, love, and loss. Rich with allusions to Ezra Pound, Hans Christian Andersen, Ukrainian classics, and The Mahābhārata, Petrichor reveals how, even in the midst of devastation, language and imagination sustain the possibility of life.

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Author: Amelia M. Glaser 
Translator: Iaroslava Strikha
Translation: English to Ukrainian

Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising explores the life and legacy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossack leader whose 1648 revolt against foreign rule helped shape the Ukrainian nation. Remembered as both a founder and a controversial figure, Khmelnytsky’s image has been reinterpreted for centuries across Ukrainian and Russian narratives. This collection brings together leading scholars to examine how his story has been used to define national identity and political legitimacy—and how those interpretations still resonate amid Russia’s war against Ukraine. Featuring essays by George Grabowicz, Frank Sysyn, Adam Teller, and others, Stories of Khmelnytsky invites readers to view history as a space for reflection, dialogue, and renewed understanding.

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Author: Eugenia Kuznetsova
Translator: Alina Senchenko, Donato Mancini
Translation: Ukrainian to English

The Ladder by Eugenia Kuznetsova is a moving novel about a Ukrainian family suddenly displaced by Russia’s invasion. Just as the main character buys his dream home in Spain to escape his family, he finds himself hosting them—along with their friends and pets—after the war forces them to flee. In this tender, often humorous, story, Kuznetsova explores how love, tension, and resilience intertwine under the strain of exile and uncertainty. Drawing from her own experience as a refugee living in Spain, she captures both the absurdity and the heartbreak of displacement. Written in clear, compassionate prose, The Ladder offers a deeply human glimpse into the cost of war and the endurance of family ties.

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TORONTO, October 28, 2025 — The Peterson Literary Fund at BCU Foundation will host its annual awards gala in Toronto on November 29, 2025, to recognize this year’s esteemed honourees. The fund launched its Translated Book Awards in 2021 and, in 2023, established the Journey for Truth Project to encourage the dissemination of information about crimes committed by Russia by supporting publications, documentary films, scholarly research, and international conferences. 

Howard G. Buffett, international investor, philanthropist, author, and photographer, will receive the Peterson Literary Fund’s 2025 Journey for Truth Award. Mr. Buffett’s book, Courage of a Nation, documents three years of war featuring remarkable photographs captured by him during his extensive travels to Ukraine (23 trips to date). As executive producer of the award-winning film, Porcelain War, Mr. Buffett has played a decisive role in raising public awareness about the brutality of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the resilience of the Ukrainian people. As Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, he has overseen the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, surpassing $1 billion. Mr. Buffett currently serves as a director of the highly successful American holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. 

Historian Timothy Snyder, who holds the James Temerty Chair in European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (University of Toronto), will receive a 2025 Translated Book Award for his book On Freedom, and will deliver acceptance remarks in the context of the current war in Ukraine. Snyder, the recent recipient of the Vasyl Stus Prize and Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, is a leading scholar on Ukraine and prolific writer on Russia’s war of aggression. As author/editor of 20 books, he is an acclaimed expert on modern authoritarianism and its correlation to tyranny, freedom, and international human rights.

Journalist-author Ali Velshi, Chief Correspondent for MSNBC, Senior Economic and Business Correspondent for NBC News, and anchor of the Velshi show, who has reported extensively from Ukraine, will lead part of the evening’s conversation.

The awards dinner will likewise honour the winners of the 2025 Translated Book Awards, recognizing the best books in translation that promote a better understanding of Ukraine-related topics relevant to a global audience. The awards carry a cash prize for the winning authors and translators.

The winners of the Peterson Literary Fund 2025
Translated Book Awards are:  

• On Freedom (Crown Publishing)
  Timothy Snyder – Author
  Halyna Herasym, Translator – Ukrainian edition

• Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture (Jamestown Foundation)
  Janusz Bugajski – Author
  Hanna Rak, Anna Melnychenko, Oleksandr Okhrimenko, Maria Dubrova, Translators – Ukrainian edition

• State of War  (Meridian Czernowitz)
  Evgenia Lopata, Andriy Lyubka – Editors
  Yulia Lyubka & Kate Tsurkan, Translators – English edition

• Ukrainian Sunrise. Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s (Academic Studies Press) Kateryna Zarembo – Author Tetiana Savchynska, Translator – English edition

According to Lisa Shymko, Jury Chair and Chief Administrator of the Peterson Literary Fund, “This year’s winning books play a vital role in dismantling the imperialist narratives that Russia propagates to conceal the crimes it has committed in Ukraine. Thanks to the translated editions of these exceptional books, a wider audience of readers will have access to meaningful writing driven by truth and unfiltered facts.”

In the view of Bob Leshchyshen, Chair of the Canadian-based BCU Foundation, “the gala program will represent a unique fusion of the world of philanthropy and literature.”

The winners were selected by the members of this year’s Peterson Literary Fund Jury: Lisa Shymko (Jury Chair), John (Ivan) Jaworsky, Alexander Motyl, Marko R. Stech, and Nadia Gereliouk.

About the Peterson Literary Fund :

The Peterson Literary Fund was established by Canadian philanthropist Stanley Peterson, whose generosity and far-sighted vision created a literary fund with a global reach. The Peterson Literary Fund operates under the auspices of the Toronto-based BCU Foundation. 

Launched in 2021, the fund oversees an international literary prize and translated book awards. It also disburses grants for writers, translators, and publishers. In accordance with the wishes of the Peterson Literary Fund’s founding benefactor, the fund is managed by Canadian political scientist Lisa Shymko, who also serves as Jury Chair.

Media enquiries: Tel. (416) 763-7005 Email: office@petersonliteraryfund.com