Event with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Kyiv-base poetess and screenwriter

Name: Event with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Kyiv-base poetess and screenwriter
Start: 2026-05-01T19:00:00-04:00
Location: 145 Evans Avenue, Suite #101, Toronto, ON, Canada, Ontario M8Z 5X8

Schedule

Fri, 01 May, 2026 at 07:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

145 Evans Avenue, Suite #101, Toronto, ON, Canada, Ontario M8Z 5X8 | Toronto, ON

Friday, May 1, 2026 - 7 pm at the KUMF Gallery
https://www.facebook.com/events/edit/1295648965844447/
Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation cordially invites you to an literature event with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Ukrainian poetess, screenwriter, songwriter and performance artist.
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Moderator - Sophie Ivanka Shields is a PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
Organizer - Uliana Hlynchak, Head of UCAF Programming Committee, Journalist & Producer of KONTAKT Ukrainian TV.
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Sponsors: Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation / KUMF Gallery,
KONTAKT Ukrainian TV, Delta Bingo.
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* Admission by donation. Space is limited *
Please register by emailing: [email protected]
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KUMF Gallery: 145 Evans Ave. Suite #101, Etobicoke, ON M8Z 5X8
[email protected] | 416-766-6802 | https://kumfgallery.com/
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Biography:
Lyuba Yakimchuk (Любов Якимчук), born in 1985 in Pervomaisk, Luhansk oblast, Ukraine, is a Kyiv-based poet, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter, and performance artist.
Literary Accomplishments.
Yakimchuk authorizes several poetry collections, including Apricots of Donbas and Like Fashion. The French edition of Apricots of Donbas was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Mallarmé and recorded by renowned actress Catherine Deneuve. This collection also received the International Poetic Award of the Kovalev Foundation in New York and was listed among Forbes Ukraine's Top 10 books about war.
She has received many awards, including the International Slavic Poetic Award, the Bohdan-Ihor Antonych Prize, and the Smoloskyp Prize, three of Ukraine’s most prestigious awards for young poets. In 2024 she was a short-term scholar at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, USA.
Her poetry has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Polish, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Greek, Estonian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Slovak, Croatian, Belarusian, Romanian, Hungarian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Serbian. Her poems have appeared in magazines in Ukraine, Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Japan, China, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Israel, Lithuania, Litva, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Serbia, Estonia, Nepal,, India etc.
In 2015 Kyiv’s NV magazine (Novoye Vremia) listed Yakimchuk among the one hundred most influential people in the arts in Ukraine.
Lyuba's poetry has received international acclaim and has been translated into over 25 languages. Leading media outlets such as the New York Times, BBC, CBC, CNN, and France24 have covered her work.
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Musical and Performance Art.
Yakimchuk co-authored the libretto for the musical Freedom Letters with Mary Brnley (Ireland; 2023) and contributed as a songwriter and spoken word artist for the music album Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate (2022). Her collaborations include performing in the Fokstroty project by Serhiy Zhadan and Yuri Gurzhy (2020), and her poetry was performed by singer Mariana Sadovska in the project “2014”. Yakimchuk has also performed in a musical and poetic duet with double-bass player Mark Tokar and vocalist Olesya Zdorovetska.
Yakimchuk's impact reached a global audience when she became the first-ever poet to perform at the Grammy Awards in 2022. She performed her poem Prayer as part of John Legend's piece Free, dedicated to Ukraine.
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Theatrical and Cinematic Contributions.
In addition to her poetry, Yakimchuk has authored plays such as Wall and Schrödinger's Cat. Her play The Wall was produced at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater, the largest and oldest theater in Ukraine. Schrödinger's Cat play participated in the festival at the Volkstheater in Vienna in 2023.
As a screenwriter, she co-authored the scripts for the feature film Slovo House. Unfinished Novel and the documentary Slovo House, in creative partnership with director Taras Tomenko. Her screenwriting explores the intricate cultural and political landscapes of the early twentieth century.
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Cultural Management
Yakimchuk has organized and curated several significant cultural projects as a cultural manager. She spearheaded the "Semenko Year" project in 2012, and the cultural project “Underground to Kybyntsi” in the village of Kybyntsi in 2016. Bouth of them are dedicated to the Ukrainian futurist Mykhailo Semenko. She also curated the literary program for the Cultural Forum "DonKult" in Lviv in 2015 and the Cultural Forum "GaliciaKult" in Kharkiv in 2016.
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Moderator
Sophie Ivanka Shields is a PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, with a collaborative specialization in Diaspora and Transnational Studies. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where her thesis focused on Ukrainian displaced and diasporic writers post-2014. Her research interests include contemporary Ukrainian refugee and diasporic narratives, postcolonial theory, and migration studies.