Julia Cimafiejeva and Manon Uphoff, on the female face of the war in Ukraine

Julia Cimafiejeva’s Days in Miensk is a report on the protests against Belarussian dictator Lukashenko in 2020. She has also written about war in her English-language collection of poetry, Motherfield. Manon Uphoff has also published works about war, and recently travelled to Ukraine for De Groene Amsterdammer. Her writing about that journey was explicitly inspired by Alexievich’s pen. The authors will use Uphoff’s travel writing and Cimafiejeva’s poems (some of which she will recite during the programme) to talk about current events, disappearing voices and shifting perspectives in the war in Ukraine. Along with host Simone Peek, international editor at NRC and currently writing a book about Ukraine, the artists have a keen eye for what Alexievich called ‘war’s unwomanly face’.

Programme in collaboration with PEN Nederland. Host: Simone Peek.

Discussion in English