Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko are chosen as the curators of the focus theme of the 12th International Book Arsenal Festival, which will be held on May 30-June 2.

Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko are people of great work. Their years-long podcast about culture for Ukrainian listeners and several foreign-language podcasts about Ukraine for a global audience are an invaluable contribution to Ukrainian subjectness. Their articles, books and speeches are very important. However, while inviting them to curate the focus theme, we thought not only about that. We were considering their regular volunteer trips throughout Ukraine, and most of all—to the Ukrainian East and South, that have been going on since the first days of Russian invasion. We were considering what they see, how they comprehend what they have seen, what conclusions they reach. How they, physically feeling the changes in the landscape while driving for a long time, when the Yermolenkos are literally carriers of people, goods and at the same time thoughts, judgments and impressions, summarize them. What does the experience of the edge—being on the edge, approaching the edge, existing on the edge of strength—give to all of us in Ukraine and beyond? I am glad that Tetyana and Volodymyr have accepted this role in Book Arsenal 2024 and have undertaken another piece of work that is important to all of us

— Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

Tetyana Ogarkova is a literary scholar, journalist, essayist (the history of French literature, the history of avant-garde and the theory of literature). PhD in Literary Studies (University of Paris-XII Val-de-Marne), senior lecturer of the Department of Literature at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, member of PEN Ukraine. Curator of the project Communication of Ukraine Abroad: Information, Analysis, Storytelling.

Volodymyr Yermolenko is a philosopher, writer and journalist, the president of PEN Ukraine, Doctor of Political Studies (France), Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Docent of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Laureate of the Yurii Sheveliov Prize (2018), the Book of the Year award in various nominations (2018, 2015), the Petro Mohyla Prize (2021). Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko started the Ukrainian-language podcast about culture Kult: Podcast.

Life on the Edge is the focus theme and the main metaphor of the 12th Book Arsenal, that the curators develop in their essay:

A car trip from the bustling capital, which hardly differs from its pre-war version now, to the frontline, where life as we know it ceases to exist, takes only about eight hours…                        

The closer to the frontline, the more rarefied becomes the landscape—fewer people, less movement, less life. A passerby in the street is already an event. An open coffee shop is the center of the emptied-out city block. A military car speeding past you is action. Distant sounds of explosions completely replace the usual sounds of the city. The closer to the frontline, the faster people move between places—here you quickly learn that death always approaches faster than you move away from it. The air itself becomes dangerous.

Who are those who remain here? And who comes and returns again and again?..                            

There, on the edge, people desperately do what they believe in. On the edge, people dare to be what others only consider as their beliefs. To be an embodiment, to stand in the face of evil, upright, holding the rest of the world behind your back. Our common world.

Olena Huseinova, a radio presenter, radio producer, writer, has become the curator of the Literature Program of Book Arsenal 2024.

During Book Arsenal, the Kids and Teens Program will also take place. Its work will be curated by Olha Rusina, a writer, journalist, translator, author of books for kids and teenagers.

The 12th Book Arsenal will host the Literary Festival The Fifth Kharkiv with a special program. This program will be organized in collaboration with the Kharkiv Literary Museum. The program will be curated by Yevhenii Stasinevych, a literary critic, literary scholar, lecturer, curator of art projects.

At this year’s Book Arsenal, PEN Ukraine will present a special program of events for the second time.

Oksana Karpiuk will curate the Professional Program, which will become a platform for industry discussions, exchange of experience and search for successful solutions.

Separate events from publishers will also be presented at Book Arsenal.

The identity of the festival, developed by the team of designers of the Mystetskyi Arsenal headed by Liera Huievska, corresponds to the focus theme and visually interprets the idea of life on the edge. In our imagination, the edge is something concrete, but visually it is ephemeral, because there are no clear-cut edges and borders in nature. Where does it run? On the right, where the battles line forms a new edge? Or inside us, like the pulsating artery that pumps blood and nourishes the whole organism? The new identity of Book Arsenal offers to answer these questions according to one’s own experience and feelings.

Let us remind you that Book Arsenal has announced the dates and format of the 12th festival. Besides, applications for the BOOK ARSENAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM from foreign publishers, rights managers, literary agents and other professionals of the book industry interested in cooperation with Ukraine are being received until March 22.

Book Arsenal is an international event organized by the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The festival has been held since 2011, and has become one of the most influential literary and artistic events in Eastern Europe. In 2019, it won The Literary Festival Award of the International Excellence Awards. The mission of the International Book Arsenal Festival is to create such interactions between people, communities, institutions when the combination of aesthetic experience and intellectual inclusion in the context of a book strengthens the capacity of a person and society.

Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The project is supported by Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States of America, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden.

Book Arsenal — 2024 is also held with the financial support of the Ministry of State for Culture and the Media of Germany within the project Exchange between German and Ukrainian Literary and Book Sectors.

Oksana Forostyna, author, translator and publisher, who is the Supervisory Board Member at the Cultural Strategy Institute and the Ukrainian PEN, has been chosen as the curator of the focus theme of the 11th International Book Arsenal Festival.

Oksana Forostyna

In 2015, Oksana started working as an independent publisher under the imprint of TAO. The first independently published book was the biography of Elon Musk titled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance. From 2016 to 2019, she was the director of Yakaboo Publishing. In 2014, she was in the New Europe 100 first list of outstanding challengers from Central and Eastern Europe (a joint project of the Polish magazine Res Publica Nowa, Visegrad Fund, Google and the Financial Times). In 2017, she was in the “Top 100 people in Ukrainian culture” list by Novoe Vremya illustrated weekly. Oksana is the translator of the books Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence by Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi and Prof. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, and This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev. She is the author of the novel Duty Free.

“The Migration Period” is the chosen focus theme of the 11th Book Arsenal Festival. Here is how Oksana Forostyna describes it:

” “The Migration Period” is defined primarily as an era of intensive migration, a time of transition between “the Ancient World” and the “Middle Ages”. However, the Migration Period almost never stops, it either accelerates or slows down, highlighted by flashes of greater or lesser violence.

The advantage of our time is that there is less and less violence. We have witnessed how both coercion and dramatism have disappeared from the stories of migration. Until recently, living in a foreign land was the privilege of a small circle of people. They wrote books about it. But migration has democratized: there is no drama of exile if you can return anytime; there is no heroism of the traveler if there is mobile connection and ATMs. The material for the books has quickly become trivial.

However, this lightness coexists in the same world and time with the tragedies of millions of refugees, displaced people, forced migrants, and captives. The plots remain exactly where they were thousands of years ago: in the stories of people fleeing war and enslavement, drought and famine, people who listen to the voice that tells them, “Arise, go out from this land.”

Ukraine, like most other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, is already facing the challenge of depopulation: there are fewer of us. And this means that sooner or later we will open up to those who will be seeking a better fate in our country. What will we tell them about ourselves? How do we see ourselves? What are the rules in our home, and what otherness are we ready to accept? … “

In addition to the curator of the focus theme, the 11th Book Arsenal has chosen the writer Irena Karpa as the curator of the Special Writer’s Program.

Irena Karpa

Since 2017, the International Book Arsenal Festival has been choosing a focus theme that invites the participants and visitors to seek answers to current issues together. Every focus theme has a curator. “Laughter. Fear. Power”, the focus theme of 2017, was curated by Tetyana Teren. “The Project of the Future” in 2018, “Neighborhood: an Open Question” in 2019; Vira Baldyniuk curated the focus themes of both years. Rostyslav Semkiv was the curator of “Optimists Skeptics”, the focus theme of the 10th Book Arsenal Festival. The guest curators were writers Yuri Andrukhovych, Andriy Bondar, Oksana Zabuzhko and Serhiy Zhadan.

The Book Arsenal is an international event organized by the Mystetskyi Arsenal. The Festival has been held since 2011, and it annually gathers together more than 200 participating organizations and over 50,000 visitors. In 2019, it received the Literary Festival Award from the London Book Fair (LBF) International Excellence Awards. The mission of the International Book Arsenal Festival is to create such interactions between people, communities and institutions when the combination of aesthetic experience and intellectual engagement in the context of the book enhances the ability of man and society.

Mystetskyi Arsenal invites all the potential participants of the 10th International Book Arsenal Festival to the online meeting with the Festival curators. At this meeting, we will talk about creating the program with:

• Yuliia Kozlovets, coordinator of the Book Arsenal, curator of the Kids&Teens Program;
• Oksana Khmeliovska, curator of the Professional Development Programs;
• Rostyslav Semkiv, curator of the focus theme;
• Tania Rodionova, curator of the special projects;
• Iryna Slavinska, curator of the special program Freedom to Be.

Event date: February 12, at 11 AM.

To participate, please register till February 11, 8 PM on: https://forms.gle/nc4hyxFxtmet4VfU6. We will send you a link to Zoom after your registration.

Х International Book Arsenal Festival is scheduled for May 26-30, 2021. Applications for the publishers and illustrators’ participation in the exhibition fair are to be submitted until February 12. Applications for the participation in event program are to be submitted until February 17.

The updated terms of participation in the Book Arsenal can be read here: https://cutt.ly/NkfZoJ2