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Bio

Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her poetry appeared in AGNIThe Irish Times, The Paris Review, PN ReviewThe Poetry Review, and many other journals. Judges Cole Swensen, Oliver de la Paz, and Maggie Smith named Oksana’s manuscript Tongue Ties a finalist for Tupelo Press’s Snowbound, Berkshire, and Dorset prizes, and individual poems and translations had been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In the Ukrainian, she is the author of poetry collections Xenia and Lovy and a recipient of B. I. Antonych and Smoloskyp prizes, two of Ukraine’s top awards for younger poets. Oksana’s translations were featured in such venues as Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, and Best European Fiction series from Dalkey Archive Press, while her translation of Lyuba Yakimchuk's "Prayer" was performed by the author at the 2022 Grammy Awards Ceremony. With Max Rosochinsky, she co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary poetry, highlighted in The New York Times. Oksana won first place in the Richmond Lattimore as well as Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender translation competitions and was awarded a National Endowments for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She is a co-translator of Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk, featured in The New York Times; and The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska, poems from which had been broadcast on BBC and CBC radio. Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University. Recently displaced from Lviv, Ukraine, she currently resides in Warsaw. 

Residencies & Grants

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interviews, features & Podcasts

Writer in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study CEU in 2020/21 reflects on her work on extinction of animal species and on the role that the global pandemic has played in making people adapt and change habits and rituals surrounding their daily activities.
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