Larissa Babij

Born 1980 in Connecticut, USA, she grew up in a family of Ukrainian post-WWII immigrants. She has a B.A. in Architecture from Barnard College, Columbia University (New York, USA, 2002) and an M.A. in Cultural Studies from the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" (Kyiv, Ukraine, 2010).

Larissa has lived in Kyiv since 2005, where she spent many years working with contemporary art as a translator, critic, curator and performer. She curated the series of performances "Hostage in NAMU" (National Art Museum of Ukraine, 2010–2011) and co-organized several contemporary art exhibitions with Ukrainian and American artists. Her critical essays and translations have been published in international and Ukrainian journals and in numerous art exhibition catalogues.

Dance and movement practices, including collaboration with Kyiv-based performance group TanzLaboratorium, have influenced the way Larissa relates to citizenship, translation and writing. As an Awareness Through Movement teacher in the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education, she has taught classes in English and Ukrainian since 2020.

Her recent writing and translations have appeared in The Evergreen Review, Arrowsmith Journal, Krytyka, London Ukrainian Review, The Odesa Review, and other publications.

Her book A Kind of Refugee (ibidem Press) chronicles living in Ukraine at war and participating in the country’s civic–military defense. She continues to publish dispatches from wartime Ukraine on Substack.

She frequently translates for the London Ukrainian Review and joined the publication as managing editor in 2025.