Serhiy Zhadan

Serhiy Zhadan studied at H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. The recorded working language is Ukrainian, German and English. The field of work recorded is poetry, literature and essay. Distinctions recorded are Polish Cultural Merit Order, Peace Prize of the German Publishers' and Booksellers' Association, Leipzig Book Fair Prize and Brücke Berlin Award.

• Name — Serhiy Zhadan • Native Name — Сергій Жадан • Birth Name — Сергій Вікторович Жадан • Born — 23 August 1974 • Birthplace — Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, Soviet Ukraine • Education — H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University • Occupation — * Poet • novelist • translator

Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, in Ukraine. He graduated from H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University in 1996 with a thesis on the work of Mykhaylo Semenko and Ukrainian futurist writers of the 1920s. He then spent three years as a graduate student of philology and taught Ukrainian and world literature from 2000 to 2004. Since then, he has worked as a freelance writer.

He began writing in 1990, drawing upon his homeland, such as the industrial landscapes of eastern Ukraine, as in his 2010 novel Voroshilovgrad. Based on the book, Yaroslav Lodygin wrote and directed the 2018 film The Wild Fields. Zhadan has published 12 books of poetry and 7 novels, and he has won more than a dozen literary awards. In 2008, the Russian translation of his novel Anarchy in the UKR made the shortlist of the National Bestseller Prize. It was also a contender for Book of the Year at the 2008 Moscow International Book Exhibition. In 2009, he won the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Prize. Voroshylovhrad won him the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year award in 2010, the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland in 2014, the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Decade award in 2014, and the Brücke Berlin Prize. His 2014 book Mesopotamia won the Angelus Award in 2015, the Award of the President of Ukraine, and Ukrainian Book of the Year in 2016. From 2016 to 2019, Zhadan was a member of the Taras Shevchenko National Award Committee of Ukraine. • Illustration — Zhadan in 2015 Zhadan has translated poetry from German, English, Belarusian, and Russian, from such poets as Paul Celan and Charles Bukowski. His own works have been translated into German, English, Dutch, Estonian, French, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Georgian, Belarusian, Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Czech. His translated poetry has appeared in Ambit, Asymptote, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, The Manchester Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry International, Poetry International Web, Plume, The Threepenny Review, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review. In August 2024, Zhadan was featured reading a poem in a TV commercial for McDonald's in Ukraine.

In 2008, Zhadan began collaborating with the band Sobaky v Kosmosi, who later changed their name to Zhadan i Sobaky. As of, he has released five studio albums with them. In 2021, recorded a full-length album titled Fokstroty with Yuriy Gurzhy, a Ukrainian-born, Berlin-based musician, DJ, and producer. In 2023, the duo followed it up with Skovorodance.

• Illustration — Serhiy Zhadan at the "Rock for Change" rally in Kharkiv, 2013 Zhadan's involvement in Ukrainian politics began while he was still a student. In 1992, he was one of the organizers of the Kharkiv-based neo-futuristic literary group "the Red Thistle". He participated in the 2004 Orange Revolution. He has repeatedly expressed sympathy for anarchists. In 2013, he was a member of the coordination council of Euromaidan Kharkiv. In the aftermath of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, he was assaulted by pro-Russian demonstrators outside the Kharkiv administration building. When asked, Zhadan has described his political commitments in the following manner: After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhadan remained in Kharkiv, helping to organize humanitarian aid. In June 2024, he posted on his Facebook page that he had joined the 13th Khartiia Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine.

• Quotations (Цитатник), (1995) • General Judas (Генерал Юда), (1995) • Pepsi (Пепсі), (1998) • The Very Best Poems, Psychedelic Stories of Fighting and Other Bullshit: Selected Poems, 1992–2000 (Вибрані поезії), (2000) • Ballads about War and Reconstruction (Балади про війну і відбудову), (2001) • The History of Culture at the Beginning of This Century (Історія культури початку століття), (2003) • UkSSR (У.Р.С.Р.), (2004) • Maradona (Марадона), (2007) • Ethiopia (Ефіопія), (2009) • Lili Marlene (Лілі Марлен), (2009) • Firearms and Knives (Вогнепальні й ножові), (2012) • Life of Maria (Життя Марії), (2015) • Templars (Тамплієри), (2016) • Antenna (Aнтена), (2018) • List of Ships (Список кораблів), (2019) • Psalm to Aviation (Псалом авіації), (2021) • What We Live for, What We Die For: Selected Poems (2019) • How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems (2023)

• Big Mac (Біґ Мак; short story collection), (2003) • Depeche Mode (Депеш Мод), (2004); Glagoslav Publications Limited, (2013), • Anarchy in the UKR, (2005) • Anthem of Democratic Youth (Гімн демократичної молоді), (2006) • Big Mac² (Біґ Мак²; short story collection), (2007) • Voroshilovgrad (Ворошиловград), (2010); Deep Vellum Publishing, (2016), • Big Mac and Other Stories (Біґ Мак та інші історії), (2011) • Mesopotamia (Месопотамія; nine stories and thirty poems), (2014) • The Orphanage (Інтернат), (2017)

• How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023) • Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes, 2023 • The Orphanage, translated by Reilly Costigan‑Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, (Yale University Press, 2021) • A New Orthography: Poems, Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2020. • What We Live for, What We Die For: Selected Poems translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). • Mesopotamia prose translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes & Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler; poetry translated by Viralna Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). • Voroshilovgrad translated by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes, (Dallas: Deep Velum, 2016) • Depeche Mode translated by Miroslav Shkandrij (London: Glagoslav Publications, 2013).