Richard Purdy Wilbur was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Lesya Ukrainka was one of Ukrainian literature's foremost writers, best known for her poems and plays. She was also an active political, civil, and feminist activist.
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by a sincere wonderment and profound connection with the environment, conveyed in unadorned language and simple yet striking imagery. In 2007, she was declared to be the country's best-selling poet.
Pavlo Hryhorovych Tychyna was a major Ukrainian poet, translator, publicist, public activist, academician, and statesman. He composed the lyrics to the Anthem of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Cynthia Huntington is an American poet, memoirist and a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. In 2004 she was named Poet Laureate of New Hampshire.
Lina Vasylivna Kostenko is a Ukrainian poet, journalist, writer, publisher, and former Soviet dissident. A founder and leading representative of the Sixtiers poetry movement, Kostenko has been described as one of Ukraine's foremost poets and credited with reviving Ukrainian-language lyric poetry.
Ruth Whitman was an American poet, translator, and professor.
Oksana Stefanivna Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian novelist, poet, and essayist. Her works have been translated into several languages.
Maria Matios is a Ukrainian poet, novelist and official. She won the "Book of the Year 2004" prize and the Taras Shevchenko National Award.
Irina (Iraida) Volodymyrivna Zhylenko, a Ukrainian poet, was the a wife of Volodymyr Drozd. She was born in Kyiv and died in August 2013 at the age of 72.
Oleh Lysheha was a Ukrainian poet, playwright, translator and intellectual. Lysheha entered Lviv University in 1968, where during his last year, he was expelled for his participation in an "unofficial" literary circle, Lviv Bohema. As punishment, Lysheha was drafted into the Soviet army and internally exiled. During the period 1972-1988, he was banned from official publication, but in 1989 his first book Great Bridge was published. For "The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha," Lysheha and his co-translator James Brasfield from Penn State University, received the 2000 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Lysheha is the first Ukrainian poet to receive the PEN award.
Tom Sleigh is an American poet, dramatist, essayist and academic, who lives in New York City. He has published nine books of original poetry, one full-length translation of Euripides' Herakles and two books of essays. His most recent books are House of Fact, House of Ruin: Poems and The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In an Age of Refugees (essays). At least five of his plays have been produced. He has won numerous awards, including the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, worth $100,000, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Guggenheim Foundation grant. He currently serves as director of Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Anna-Maria Kellen Prize and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for Fall 2011.
Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, musician, translator, and social activist.
Robin Becker is an American poet, critic, feminist, and professor. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Tiger Heron and Domain of Perfect Affection. Her All-American Girl, won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. Becker earned a B.A. in 1973 and an M.A. from Boston University in 1976. She lives in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania and spends her summers in southern New Hampshire.
Virlana Tkacz is the founding director of the Yara Arts Group, a resident company at the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in theatre directing.
Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Ukrainian American poet, translator, editor, and teacher. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She is author of six poetry collections including Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones for which she received a Sheila Motton Book Award, and Silvertone (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013) for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association's 2014 Co-Poet of the Year. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon University Classic Contemporary. Her sixth, Bad Harvest, was published in fall of 2018 and was named a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. Her co-translations with Ali Kinsella from the Ukrainian of selected poems by Natalka Bilotserkivets, "Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow" was published by Lost Horse Press in fall, 2021 and short-listed for the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize the ALTA National Translation Award, and awarded the 2022 AAUS Translation Prize.
Mykola Riabchuk is Ukrainian public intellectual, journalist, political analyst, literary critic, translator and writer. Riabchuk is known for his analytical articles and essays on Ukrainian politics, national identity and analysis of Ukrainian history from postcolonial perspective. Married to Ukrainian poet Natalka Bilotserkivets.
Marianna Kiyanovska is a Ukrainian poet, translator and a literary scholar and is a recipient of the Shevchenko National Prize (2020) and the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (2022) for the poetry book The Voices of Babyn Yar. She is a member of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine and the Ukrainian PEN.
Yuliya Musakovska is a Ukrainian poet and translator. She is the author of poetry collections such as “Exhaling, Inhaling” (2010), “Masks” (2011), “Hunting for Silence” (2014), “Men, Women and Children,” and “The God of Freedom” (2021) as well as two poetry chapbooks released in Poland and Sweden. Her poems have been translated into over thirty languages and widely published across the globe. A full length English translation of Musakovska's poetry, The God of Freedom, was published by Arrowsmith Press in 2024.
