Signals of Being or Verbum Caro Factum Est: A Play in Three Acts

Book launch and discussion of Signals of Being with author Volodymyr Rafeyenko and translator Mark Andryczyk

In conversation with Oleh Kotsyuba, Director of Print and Digital Publications at HURI, and joined by Maryna Baydyuk, President of United Help Ukraine.

Books will be available to purchase at the event.

About the Book

It’s the early days of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The lives of the inhabitants of the cottage community Blyzhni Sady (Nearby Orchards) have suddenly been shattered and they have now been thrust into attempts at individual and collective survival. Pinched between Bucha and Borodianka, these men and women are surrounded by the Russian army and cut off from the rest of Ukraine. In Volodymyr Rafeyenko's play, their pursuit of contact with their fellow countrymen becomes the background of an exploration of Ukrainian identity. Featuring innovatively imagined staging and interspersed with quotes from Ukrainian classical and contemporary literature, as well as from Shakespeare, Rilke and others, Signals of Being offers a captivating dramatic interpretation of a country at war today. 

The publication of this book was generously sponsored by United Help Ukraine. 

About the Speakers

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary and film critic. Having graduated from Donetsk University with a degree in Russian philology and culture studies, he wrote and published entirely in Russian. Following the outbreak of the Russian aggression in Ukraine’s east, Rafeyenko left Donetsk and moved to a town near Kyiv, where he wrote Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, his first novel in the Ukrainian language, which was shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book (1999) and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days (2017). 

 

Mark Andryczyk administers the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and teaches Ukrainian literature at its Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He holds a PhD in Ukrainian literature from the University of Toronto and is the author of The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction. He has published translations of numerous Ukrainian poets and writers, including Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Lyuba Yakimchuk, Yuri Andrukhovych, Marjana Savka, Hrytsko Chubai, Oleh Lysheha, Serhiy Zhadan, and many others. [Photo by Mykhailo Krupievsky]

Maryna Baydyuk is the President of United Help Ukraine. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and studied at the National Medical University of Ukraine before coming to the United States in 1997. She continued her studies at Hunter College, CUNY, and then Georgetown University, where she received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology. After completing her postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Baydyuk joined the faculty as a Research Professor at the Department of Biology at Georgetown University. Her research is focused on the mechanisms of function and repair in the central nervous system. Since 2014, Dr. Baydyuk has been a member of United Help Ukraine (UHU), a non-profit organization based in the Washington, DC area. She has served as a board member since 2017 and as president since 2019.
 

This event is organized by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies public event series and in collaboration with HURI Books.

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access should contact HURI Programs Manager, Megan K. Duncan Smith, at least two weeks in advance of the session.

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