Starovoyt Iryna

Starovoyt Iryna

Poet, essayist

Iryna Starovoyt is a poet, essayist, and Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, she made her poetry debut with the book No Longer Limpid (1997) which reserved her a place within the new generation of writers since Ukraine’s independence. She hosted a literary review program "Tomy "on regional TV. Starovoyt’s work has been featured in several anthologies and individual poems have been translated and published in Polish, Lithuanian, English, Romanian and Armenian, and set to music. She has been representing Ukraine at many high profile literary events across Europe, e.g. the European Culture Forum 2005 in Luxembourg, the European Female Writers’ Congress in Budapest (2008), Bjornstjerne Bjornson World Symposium (2010) in Oslo and Lillehammer. Her book of selected poems A Field of Foundlings (2017) in English translations has been published by the Lost Horse Press in the US opening the series of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in English translations.

She has been awarded the Key to the City award from the Lviv City Mayor, serves as the Head of the Jury for the transnational literary prize UNESCO's City of Literature based in Lviv and is appointed expert for the "Translate Ukraine" program.

She teaches Critical and Creative Thinking, History of Ideas and Cultural Practices and leads a research seminar in Cultural studies and has been lecturing and reading at a dozen of Universities , like Greifswald University, Germany, University of Turin, Italy, Cambridge and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Great Britain, Groningen University, the Netherlands and Uppsala University, Sweden.

She authored three volumes of poetry and a number of essays. She serves as an academic director of the Biennale of Trust, co-edited "Ukraina moderna" and co-organized literary festival "Lem’s City".

Author's publications on the PEN website: