Writing in Times of War: An Evening With Irena Karpa

Irena Karpa is the author of numerous books including Freud Would Cry, Good News from the Aral Sea, How to Get Married as Many Times as You Want, and Don’t Tell Anyone. She is a columnist for Vanity Fair, Deutsche Welle, NV, Radio Svoboda, Vogue Ukraine. She’s also a singer and frontwoman of the QARPA band.In addition to her writing, curatorial work and music, she’s been an active voice in France and beyond, explaining Russia’s war against Ukraine. Irena Karpa is involved in numerous volunteering and fundraising initiatives to rally support for Ukraine. Her professional work and activism are illustrative of the diverse Ukrainian cultural scene and the challenges faced by Ukrainian creatives since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Sasha Dovzhyk is the special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and an Associate Lecturer in Ukrainian Literature at the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, UCL. She writes about Ukraine’s full-scale resistance for CNN Opinion, Los Angeles Review of Books, New Lines Magazine and other outlets as the IWM Documenting Ukraine grantee. She has recently edited Ukrainian Cassandra: New Translations of Works by Lesia Ukrainka (Live Cannon, 2023) and Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley (MHRA, 2022). She holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Birkbeck, University of London.