Olena Stiazhkina

Stiazhkina in 2021

Olena Viktorivna Stiazhkina is a Ukrainian historian, academic and writer. She is a research fellow in history at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She is the author of "Cecil the Lion Had to Die", the war diary "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary", and the essay collection "Zero Point Ukraine: Four Essays on World War II". Her book "Cecil the Lion Had to Die" won the Lviv–UNESCO City of Literature Award in 2023.

Early life and education

Stiazhkina was born in 1958 in Donetsk and has a Ph.D. in history.[1]

Academic career

From 1993 to 2014, she taught Slavic History at Donetsk National University.[2]

After the Russian occupation of Donetsk in 2014, Stiazhkina left the city and taught at Mariupol State University from 2015 to 2016. A native Russian speaker, from 2014, Stiazhkina also began writing solely in Ukrainian.[3]

Since 2016, Stiazhkina has worked as a research fellow in history at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.[1] She was also a virtual writer in residence at the faculty of medieval and modern languages at the University of Oxford's New College in 2023.[2]

Stiazhkina has also published collections of novels and short stories in Ukrainian and Russian. Her second novel was the book "Cecil the Lion Had to Die", which was released in 2021. In 2023, she was a member of the jury for the Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize.[4] In 2024, she released the war diary "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary".[5][6]

Critical reception

Of her book, "Cecil the Lion Had to Die", Asymptote said "Through this series of non-sequential pictures, Stiazhkina interweaves the stories of twelve characters over the course of thirty-four years. Each of them must grapple in their own way with the question of how to live in a globalized world."[7]

In 2024, Publishers Weekly explained of Stiazhkina and the book: "Stiazhkina, a Russian native speaker, transitioned to writing in Ukrainian, and her linguistic shift is visually represented in the novel's design, with Russian text appearing as white on black pages and Ukrainian as black on white—a creative decision that mirrors Ukraine's cultural transformation."[8]

Of her war diary, "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary", the New Eastern Europe said it was "Deeply personal and at times unnerving... depict[ing] an eastern Ukraine ravaged by Russian propaganda" that "Stiazhkina manages... to give voice to the human toll of the war in her entries. She focuses not necessarily on body counts,... Instead, she centres the focus on the individual, emotional toll individuals pay during wartime."[5]

Publishers Weekly said the book "provides a harrowing account of Russia's 2014 takeover of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk... Filled with gut-wrenching anecdotes and rousing prose."[6]

Awards and honours

Stiazhkina was awarded the Lviv–UNESCO City of Literature Award (2023) for her novel "Cecil the Lion Had to Die".[9]

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Selected works

  • Olena Stiazhkina (author), Anne O. Fisher (translator). "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary". 2024. ISBN 978-0674291706.[2][10][11]
  • Olena Stiazhkina (author), Dominique Hoffmann (translator). Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2024) Harvard University Press. (English).[7]
  • Olena Stiazhkina. Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2021) (Ukrainian)
  • Olena Stiazhkina. Zero Point Ukraine: Four Essays on World War II (2021)[2] Ibidem Press. ISBN 978-3838215501.
  • Olena Stiazhkina. Rozka. (2018)
  • Olena Stiazhkina. In God's Language. (2016)[12]

References

  1. 1 2 "Styazhkina Olena". PEN Ukraine. Retrieved 15 November 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "2nd Ukrainian writer in residence". University of Oxford. 31 January 2023. Retrieved 15 November 2025.
  3. ↑ Alter, Alexandra (13 March 2022). "Ensuring Ukrainian Voices Heard in the West". Chicago Tribune. New York Times. pp. B3. Retrieved 10 June 2026 – via newspapers.com.
  4. ↑ Shadursky, Claudia (27 September 2023). "Olena Stiazhkina: "We are speaking about modern times only with words with which we had described the past"". Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE). Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  5. 1 2 Gleichgewicht, Daniel (2 February 2024). "Propaganda, a 'Cursed Region' and the Yanukovych disease: a review of Olena Stiazhkina's Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary". New Eastern Europe. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary by Olena Stiazhkina". Publishers Weekly. 22 November 2023. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  7. 1 2 "Lillian Posner reviews Cecil the Lion Had to Die by Olena Stiazhkina". Asymptote Journal. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  8. ↑ Nawotka, Ed (20 November 2024). "Ukrainian Author Warns West Through Literature of War". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  9. ↑ "Olena Stiazhkina won the 2023 Lviv – UNESCO City of Literature Award". Chytomo. 11 January 2024. Retrieved 15 November 2025.
  10. ↑ Stasiuk, Yurii; Yarynich, Olha (12 November 2023). "Ukrainian author speaks on life amid the war". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 10 June 2026.
  11. ↑ "In 2014, one Ukrainian writer kept a diary during Russia's occupation of Donetsk". The Kyiv Independent. 29 August 2024. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
  12. ↑ Toner, Aine (7 March 2022). "Writers in Show of Solidarity with Ukrainian Peers at Lyric Theatre". Belfast Telegraph. p. 10. Retrieved 10 June 2026 – via newspapers.com.
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