The name of the 2022 Drahomán Prize laureate will be announced on October 17, 2022

On October 17, 2022, the Ukrainian Institute, PEN Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute will announce the name of the laureate of the Drahomán Prize. The award ceremony will be held abroad for the first time.

This year, it will be hosted by Literaturhaus Berlin – the first house of literature in Germany, a cultural and educational institution that promotes world literatures, making them accessible to the general public through modern formats. The ceremony will begin at 18:00 Kyiv time (17:00 Berlin time) and will be broadcast online on the Facebook pages of the Ukrainian Institute, PEN Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute, as well as on the YouTube channels Literaturhaus Berlin and Ukrainian Institute.

Due to the full-scale war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine, the announcement of the award’s shortlist has been postponed until August. The members of the Prize Chapter announced the finalists names on August 18, 2022. They are:

  • Alessandro Achilli (Italy) is a translator from Ukrainian into Italian. Senior assistant at the Department of Slavic Languages ​​and Literatures of the University of Cagliari (Italy), a researcher of modern Ukrainian literature with special focus on poetry and cultural history. Nominated for the award with a translation into Italian of Markiyan Kamysh’s novel “Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl” (published by Keller Editore).
  • Iryna Dmytryshyn (France) is a translator from Ukrainian into French. Author of numerous publications on Ukrainian literature and history. She is responsible for Ukrainian studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. She was nominated for the award with the French translation of Yuri Andrukhovych’s novel “Lexicon of Intimate Cities” (Noir sur Blanc publishing house).
  • Bohdan Zadura (Poland) is a translator from Ukrainian into Polish, writer and literary critic. The author of twenty-five books of poetry and more than a dozen volumes of essays and prose. Long-term editor of Akcent quarterly, since 2004 editor-in-chief of Twórczości monthly. Nominated for the award with translations into Polish of Kateryna Babkina’s “My Grandfather Danced the Best” (Warsztaty Kultury publishing house), Vasyl Makhno’s “Eternal Calendar” (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy publishing house) and Yuri Vynnychuk’s “Lutencia” (Warstwy publishing house).

The winner of the Award will receive a statuette made by the famous Ukrainian sculptor Anna Zvyagintseva, a honorarium of 3,000 euros, as well as additional opportunities for work and promotion of one’s work.

The first laureate of the Drahomán Prize, Claudia Dathe, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych, and a representative of the Ukrainian Embassy to Germany will also take part in the ceremony.

Application period for the 2022 Drahomán Prize closed on November 30, 2021. After analysing the applications for compliance with the technical criteria, 20 translators were longlisted for the Drahomán Prize. Most of the nominees are translators who translate from Ukrainian into Polish and Italian. Also on the long list were translators into German, Belarusian, Romanian, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Hungarian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Macedonian and Hebrew.

Applications were received from 15 countries, including Italy, Belarus, Romania, Austria, the Netherlands, Brazil, Poland, France, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Israel, Latvia, North Macedonia and Czechia. Diplomatic missions of Ukraine in various countries of the world and foreign publishing houses submitted the most applications.

The Drahomán Prize was founded in 2020 by the Ukrainian Institute, PEN Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute. The award is called to support and celebrate the valuable work of translators from Ukrainian into world languages. The Drahomán Prize is awarded for high translation skills and contribution to the promotion of Ukrainian literature abroad.

The short list and the laureate of the Prize are selected by the Prize Chapter, which consists of 9 members. It includes representatives of the founding organisations, as well as authoritative writers, translators, linguists and literary critics, and cultural managers.

The Chapter of the 2022 Prize included: Andriy Kurkov, writer and President of PEN Ukraine; Volodymyr Sheiko, General Director of the Ukrainian Institute; Oleksandra Koval, Director of the Ukrainian Book Institute; Olya Hnatiuk, researcher, professor at National University of  the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and the University of Warsaw, Vice-President of PEN Ukraine; Ostap Slyvynsky, poet and translator; Valentina Stukalova, Manager of book and intellectual projects at the French Institute in Ukraine; Yurii Prokhasko, translator; Marko Robert Stech, Ukrainian and Canadian literary scholar and writer; Iryna Starovoyt, literary critic, poet, translator.

The first laureate of the 2020 Drahomán Prize was the German translator Claudia Dathe. She was nominated with translations into German of Serhiy Zhadan’s “Antenna” (published by Suhrkamp) and Oleksii Chupa’s novel “Tales of My Bomb Shelter” (published by Haymon Verlag). The Chapter’s Special Honor “for excellence in translation and promotion of Ukrainian classical literature” went to Imadeddine Raef, a Ukrainian-to-Arabic translator who was also nominated for the Drahomán Prize by the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Lebanon with his translation of “Beirut Stories” by Agathangel Krymsky.

The Drahomán Prize 2022 is awarded in cooperation between the Goethe-Institut and the Ukrainian Institute as part of a comprehensive package of measures for which the Federal Foreign Office is providing funds from the 2022 supplementary budget to mitigate the consequences of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.