Taratorina Svitlana

Born in 1985, Svitlana grew up in Crimea. Graduated from Kyiv National Mykhailo Dragomanov Pedagogical University. Worked in journalism and political PR. Taratorina’s articles were published in media outlets such as ELLE, Ukrainska Pravda, Glavred, DreamKyiv, Gazeta.ua, LitAccent, etc. her short stories were included into anthologies and almanacs among which there are An Issue of Humanity ("Питання людяності", Kyiv, 2017), The Best of Ukrainian Science Fiction ("Найкраща українська фантастика", Odesa, 2018), Gates ("Брама", Kharkiv, 2018), This Is What She Also Did ("Це теж зробила вона", Kyiv, 2018), Murder on the … Street ("Вбивство на вулиці…", Vinnytsia, 2019), Pocket Travelary ("Кишеньковий мандруарій", Kyiv, 2019), Bogeyman. The first Nightmare ("Бабай. Перший кошмар", Bila Tserkva, 2019), IndependenceAgency ("Агенція Незалежність", Ternopil, 2021), The Chronicles of Unknown Lands ("Хроніки незвіданих земель", Kharkiv, 2022).

In 2018, her first novel Lazarus ("Лазарус") was published after having been awarded at a publishing contest. Lazarus was awarded with the LitAccent of the Year prize, was longlisted for the BBC Book of the Year prize in 2019, named as the best book of the year according to the World of Fantasy fanzine, and listed among the ten most important books of the year according to The Village. In 2019, it received the special award of the Ukrainian Book Institute at the BookForum Best Book ceremony in Lviv. The same year, Svitlana Taratorina got the CHRYSALIS AWARDS award from the European Science Fiction Society for the best debut and was listed among the 25 most mentioned authors in Ukraine in 2018, according to the Focus magazine.

Svitlana Taratorina is a winner of fantasy short stories contestss launched by the Star Fortress literary association and Stos magazine. She got a special award at the Brama Fantasy Short Story Festival.

In 2020, her book This Is Maria Who Drew the Beasts ("Оця Марія звірів малювала") was published in the Vydavnytstvo Publishing House. The book constitutes a fiction biography of Maria Prymachenko for children. It was longlisted for the Espreso: The Readers’ Choice-2020 award, shortlisted for the BaraBooka’s Top-2020 and the All-Ukrainian Book of the Year rating-2020.

In 2021, with support the UNDP, the Vydavnytstvo Publishing House launched a series of social comics. Within this project, Svitlana Taratorina became the script writer of The Sounds of Peace ("Звуки миру") - a book about teens from the frontline territories of Ukraine. The comic was included into the teenagers’ recommended reading list of the Chytomo literary outlet, listed among the best Ukrainian books of 2021 according to PEN Ukraine, and got the special award from the BaraBooka outlet.

In 2022, Taratorina’s short story The Language of Babylon was translated into Polish and included in the anthology of Ukrainian science fiction JĘZYK BABILONU. ANTOLOGIA UKRAIŃSKIEJ FANTASTYKI.

Svitlana Taratorina is a co-founder of the YouTube project Фантастичні talk(s). Since March 2022, after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, a series of charity interviews with world’s science fiction stars (among them James S. A. Corey, Rebecca Quan, Peter Watts, Joe Abercrombie, Marissa Meyer, Jonathan Stroud, Richard Ness, Patrick Morgan, Joe Hill) has been conducted on the channel. During the streams, over 100,000 UAH have been raised to meet the needs of the Ukrainian army. The channel continues to get Ukrainian readers acquainted with Ukrainian and foreign writers in the genre and give lectures on the history of Ukrainian science fiction.

Since October 2022, Svitlana Taratorina is employed as a communication director of the Vivat Publishing House.