Our Being in the World. Focus Topic of PEN Ukraine

Our Being in the World is the 2025 focus topic to be reflected upon by members of PEN Ukraine and guest authors in essays and public discussions.

Throughout the year, the authors’ essays will be published on the website of the project’s main information partner, Suspilne Culture. Selected texts will be available in the Telegraf artbook from the Projector Publishing.

Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher, writer, president of PEN Ukraine, describes the focus topic’s relevance and importance as follows:

"Our survival is down to us; yet it’s impossible without the others’ assistance.

Being silent isn’t what we may allow ourselves. Neither is it being unnoticed or speechless.

Being deprived of your voice is a path towards being deprived of your life. Being silenced is a path towards oblivion.

Tyrants and despots deprive their victims of their voices prior to imprisoning or killing them. Blur their faces. Erase their life stories.

For the sake of our own being, we must struggle now for having our voice heard. For having our face recognized, our stories considered, and our land admitted as righteously ours, without dissent.

Still, while striving to being discovered by other cultures, we also discover other cultures for ourselves. While striving to being discovered by the world, we discover other the world for ourselves.

We struggle for the fact that the world’s existence is impossible without Ukraine’s existence to be understood. We struggle for not our mere existence solely, but for our own place on the world map.

We struggle for our being in the world.

We struggle for our being."