A Violin from the Other Riverside

Dmytro Kremin (1953-2017) was an award-winning poet, journalist, essayist, translator, songwriter, civil activist, scholar, and one of the most prominent contemporary literary personalities of the post-World War II generation in Ukraine. Born and raised in a picturesque Transcarpathian village, Kremin started writing poetry at an early age. His student years were marked by literary experimentation and artistic resistance to the Brezhnev regime of mediocrity and conformism. Upon graduation, Kremin moved to Mykolayiv in the south of Ukraine, where he became one of the stalwarts of Ukraine's national and cultural revival. His work is famed for uniting history and modernity as well as intertwining ardour and objectivity in the portrayal of his homeland in its joys and sufferings. In 1999, Kremin was the recipient of the Taras Shevchenko Prize, the highest literary distinction in Ukraine.

Svetlana Lavochkina is a Ukrainian-born novelist, poet, and translator. She has lived in Germany since 1999. Her work has been published world-wide. Her novella, Dam Duchess, was chosen runner-up in the Paris Literary Prize. Her novel Zap was shortlisted for Tibor & Jones Pageturner Prize, London. Both books in German translation were published by Voland & Quist to national critical acclaim. Lavochkina's verse novel, Carbon, was published in 2020 by Lost Horse Press, USA. In 2022, Carbon in Ukrainian self-translation was announced as a prize-winner in the international Lviv Literary Prize, The Winged Lion.