In Conversation: Myroslav Laiuk. Writer and Documentarian.

Join us for a special online conversation with Myroslav Laiuk, Ukrainian writer, novelist, poet, and documentarian, and author of Bakhmut (Ukraїner Publishing House, 2025).

Monday, December 15, 2025 at 1:00 p.m. EST / 8:00 p.m. Kyiv Time

 Mr. Laiuk will be joined by Danylo Pavlov (photographer), Kate Tsurkan (co-translator), and Dmytro Kyyan (co-translator).

 Moderated by Christopher Atwood, editor-in-chief in English of Ukraїner International.

This event will be presented virtually via Zoom. Access will be available by registration.

During the fiercest battles for Bakhmut in early 2023, writer Myroslav Laiuk and photojournalist Danylo Pavlov lived among Ukrainian infantrymen and artillery crews, medics, chaplains, rescuers, and the children who refused to leave. Artillery fire, collapsing buildings, and street combat formed the atmosphere of days and nights spent witnessing life where it seemed impossible. Laiuk’s book Bakhmut captures this world through what he calls “fixation”: a method of writing that “photographs” reality, preserving moments in all their starkness and ambiguity. The term becomes a motif, shifting in meaning as he records an anti-aircraft gunner who has just downed a Russian jet, a Wagner fighter who loves Nabokov, and fathers and sons fighting side by side.

The stories move through landscapes where dogs feed on the dead and fear hardens into habit, yet where courage, tenderness, and unexpected flashes of love persist. This heightened clarity raises uneasy questions: Is nuance possible amid such extremity? Or, is it a luxury available only to those not fighting for survival? And, do survivors owe the world that nuance at all?

Blending frontline reportage with reflective essays on memory, violence, and erasure, Bakhmut becomes both a literary document of war and a meditation on how language can record – and resist – destruction.

What others are saying about Bakhmut:

“Blending a poet’s skill with committed war reporting, Myroslav Laiuk illuminates the details, images, personalities of war the way only a poet can. He re-discovers Ukraine for the reader, making the neglected loved.”— Peter Pomerantsev, British journalist, and writer, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda.

“Each participant in the war forges their own path. Frequently, these paths are off-road, marred by potholes and rough asphalt. Myroslav has succeeded in gathering and conveying the profound anguish embedded in the stories of each of his characters. It is through books like this that entire generations will come to understand the monumental struggles of the Ukrainian armed forces.”— Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press photojournalist, Pulitzer Prize winner.

“Not just the definitive book about the bloodiest battle yet of the Kremlin’s evil war against Ukraine, but also a window into Russia’s dark soul.”— John Sweeney, British writer, author of the book Killer In The Kremlin.

Myroslav Laiuk was born on 31 July 1990 in the Carpathians and now resides in Kyiv, Ukraine. He holds a PhD in philosophy and literature, and lectures at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. As a war documentarian, he works on the frontline and in de-occupied territories. His texts and essays from Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions have been published in Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech and US media, including Gazeta Wyborcza, Eurozine, LitHub, Reporters, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

His poems and prose in English translation have appeared in The Dial, The New Statesman, Agenda, Common Knowledge, and Poetry International. Laiuk is the author of three novels and three poetry books, with his works translated and published in Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Belarus. In 2018, Kyiv Post recognized him among its Top 30 under 30, naming him one of Ukraine’s most innovative young figures.

Danylo Pavlov is a Ukrainian documentary photographer, photo editor at Reporters, and photographer with The Ukrainians based in Kyiv.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Pavlov has focused on capturing de-occupied territories and the Ukrainian army. His images have reached audiences around the world: of fishermen from the Kyiv Sea who’ve rescued people from occupation, or of a dog clinging to its rescuer’s leg in the Kherson region after the dam explosion.

Pavlov was awarded for documenting the work of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine during wartime. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with The Washington Post, Forbes Ukraine, Local History, and other publications. The photographer is dedicated to documenting Russian war crimes and believes in the powerful combination of literary reportage and photography.

Kate Tsurkan is a writer, editor, and translator. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a reporter writing mostly about culture-related topics for The Kyiv Independent.

Dmytro Kyyan is a Ukrainian-American writer, editor, and translator from Kharkiv. From the 1990s to the early aughts he was the editor-in-chief of Foto & Video Magazine and under his direction, it became the leading publication in photography throughout Eastern Europe. His co-translation of Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker was published by Deep Vellum in 2024.

Christopher Atwood is a specialist on Eastern Europe, focusing on perceptions of identity and colonial violence. He served as a contributor and adviser on the independent report, “An Independent Legal Analysis of the Russian Federation’s Breaches of the Genocide Convention in Ukraine and the Duty to Prevent.” Atwood has advised several NGOs in the United States, Ukraine, and Russia. He was recently named editor-in-chief in English of Ukraїner International.

___

For further information: Please contact the Ukrainian Institute of America at (212) 288-8660 or info@ukrainianinstitute.org.

___

Printed copies of Bakhmut can be ordered directly from Ukraїner by visiting https://store.ukrainer.net/en/product/enbook-bakhmut/