The Focus Theme and Curators of the 14th Book Arsenal

To Bear Your Freedom is the Focus Theme of the 14th International Book Arsenal Festival, which will take place on May 28-31 at the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

 The curator of the Focus Theme is Maksym Butkevych — Ukrainian journalist, human rights activist and war veteran. After Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Maksym joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in June 2022 he was captured by Russian troops. A few months later, a Russian court sentenced him to 13 years in prison on trumped-up charges.

While Maksym Butkevych was in captivity, his colleagues published a collection of his texts Am richtigen Platz: Ein ukrainischer Friedensaktivist im Krieg (In the Right Place: A Ukrainian Peace Activist at War) in French and German.

In October 2024, after spending 2 years and 4 months in Russian captivity, Maksym Butkevych was released. In 2025, Maksym became a co-founder of the charity foundation The Principle of Hope and was awarded the Václav Havel Prize by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Maksym Butkevych reveals the sense of this year’s Focus Theme To Bear Your Freedom in his curatorial essay.

“Freedom is absolute. Because no one can completely deprive us of it. Because even when we cannot choose the conditions in which we find ourselves, we can choose our attitude towards them, as Viktor Frankl wrote, choose our thoughts and views of the world. As long as we exist, so does our freedom. The freedom of choices we make every day and at every moment with what the course of events, other beings and ourselves provided us, and this freedom cannot be taken away from us, and we cannot get rid of it. But along with it, we cannot get rid of the responsibility for the choices we make: each choice bears responsibility for its justification and consequences. Freedom is what we bear within ourselves, whether we want it or not, even if sometimes this burden may seem heavy. However, it is precisely by bearing it that we bring it into the world and realize it, embody it in our choices and actions. And even when a person chooses not to make a choice, this is also a choice, and the responsibility for it remains with the person. Responsibility is the Siamese twin of freedom, one whole with it and, like in case of freedom, there is no escape from it. Freedom to treat, freedom to think, act, create ― everyone has their own responsibility, originating from the word response―to the question about the grounds and justification for the realization of our freedom. This response must be worthy.”

— Curator of the Focus Theme of the 14th Book Arsenal Maksym Butkevych.

“Every year, we, as the Mystetskyi Arsenal team, ask ourselves the question: who, whose thoughts and ideas embody what we call the nerve of time. Who can ask such a question that resonates with the moment we are living in? Whose life path is a great story in itself? This year, we were unanimous: it is Maksym Butkevych. His judgements about freedom and its weight, even its heaviness, about how much one has to give up for it, about the fragility of a hero and people’s tendency to delegate all responsibility and burdens to this imaginary demigod, about how much strength, perseverance, stubbornness it takes to bear one’s freedom―all of them resonate very deeply. We argued about what would be more accurate: to bear, to bring forth or to endure freedom. However, we have agreed that freedom is a burden, but there is something in this word that resembles the lightness of a gonfalon fluttering in the wind high above your head. That is why we have chosen exactly this variant ― to bear your freedom.”

— Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta

This year, the Writer’s Program returns to Book Arsenal. It will be curated by serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, volunteer, poet, prose writer and translator Andriy Lyubka.

 

The Main Program of this year’s Festival will be curated by cultural manager, lecturer in literature courses, researcher of intertextual and intercultural connections Valentyna Sotnykova.

 

The Kids Program, curated by writer, journalist and translator Olya Rusina, will also take place within Book Arsenal.

The Special Teens Program is being prepared by participants of LitLab Teens and the Youth Council of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

 

The Professional Program will be run by manager of cultural and educational projects, editor, literary scholar Yuliia Konopliana.

The 14th Book Arsenal will host the Festival of First Plays and the Veterans Theater with a special program.

 

The third season of the Book Arsenal Fellowship Program will be coordinated by project manager Mariia Surzhenko. It will be a platform for B2B meetings and introductions of foreign publishers, rights managers and literary agents to the Ukrainian book market.

Publishers will also hold independent events within the Book Arsenal program.

 

The Festival’s identity was traditionally developed by the Mystetskyi Arsenal design team led by Art Director Lera Guievska.

“The Focus Theme of this year’s Festival is visually revealed by the image of a flag fluttering in the wind. We bear our freedom just as we carry a flag—openly and high. This is our visible position. Our responsibility. Our continuity. Generations before us fought for this freedom, our society fights for it every day. The color scheme refers to the heavenly gradients. After all, everyone who strives for freedom imagines a clear sky above them—a space free from earthly things. The clear sky above our heads is an image of the freedom we defend and strive for every day. This is a space without limitations, this is a space for action, this is a space for the future.”

—Art Director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal Lera Guievska.

 

 

Suspilne Ukraine will become the general information partner of the 14th Book Arsenal.

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 festival is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.