A Ukrainian writer is coming to the University of Chichester to launch the English translation of his book and support fundraising efforts for children affected by war trauma.
On the 13th of March, Viacheslav Musiienko will present In Search of Hay for Horses and Lovers: A Diary in a Time of War, a deeply moving war memoir that offers a compassionate glimpse into the lives of both people and animals amid Ukraine’s full-scale invasion.
Dr Daria Mattingly, Lecturer in Contemporary International History (European), will open the event with a short talk on the historical and political context of the memoir. She will then engage in conversation with Viacheslav Musiienko about the book, which covers the first 19 months of the full-scale invasion, including bombings, black outs, and the evacuation of family members and horses.
Viacheslav, a member of the Union of Ukrainian Writers, and co-owner of the Sport-Elite equestrian club near Kyiv with his wife Irene Musiienko, will also talk about his and Irene’s on-going work at the Sport-Elite club. This includes charitable day camps for the children of military personnel and evacuees from Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, which was besieged for three months at the start of the invasion and largely destroyed before being occupied by Russian forces. Horses belonging to the club also take part in hippotherapy programmes for injured soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The event will be chaired by Dr Naomi Foyle, Reader in Critical Imaginative Writing at the University. Electricity in Kyiv permitting, we will be joined online by Dmytro Drozdovskyi, editor-in-chief of Vsesvit, Ukraine’s leading literature journal and facilitator of the publication of In Search of Hay for Horses and Lovers. Dmytro will speak to the urgent need to promote Ukrainian literature at a time of existential threat. Both Viacheslav and Dmytro are eager to take questions from the floor.
The launch of In Search of Hay for Horses and Lovers is the third Ukrainian literature event at the University of Chichester, following Writing, War, Connection in April 2023, featuring the university’s digital writer in residence Volodymyr Rafeienko; and the launch of O Venice! by Borys Fynkelshteyn in October 2024.
The launch of In Search of Hay for Horses and Lovers is free and will take place at 5-6pm on Thurs 13 March, in Cloisters, Bishop Otter Campus. Signage will be up on the night.
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