Iya Kiva

Iya Kiva is a Ukrainian bilingual poet, translator and journalist. She was born in 1984 in Donetsk but has lived in Kyiv since the summer of 2014 because of the Russian occupation of Donetsk. Kiva writes in both Russian and Ukrainian. She is the author of two collections of poetry, “Podal’she ot raya” [Farther from Heaven] (2018) and “Persha storinka zimi” [The First Page of Winter] (2019), as well as a book of interviews with Belarus writers, “My prokinemos’ inshimi: rozmovi z suchasnymi belosurs’kimi pis’mennikami pro minule, teperishne I maybutne Bilorusi” [We will awaken as others: discussions with contemporary Belarus authors about the past, the present, and the future of Belarus] (2021). Kiva is a member of the PEN Club Ukraine. Her poetry has been translated into 20 languages. She is the translator of contemporary Ukrainian poets into Russian, she also translates Belarus and Polish poetry and essays into both Ukrainian and Russian. She contributes to the program PJ Library as editor and translator of children’s books from English to Ukrainian. Kiva has received various international and Ukrainian awards and has participated in a variety of festivals and competitions, including the International Poetry Festival “Emigrantskaya Lyra” (2016), the International Poetry Competition “Gayvoronniya” (2019), the Yuriy Kaplan Literary Award (2013), award of the Literary Competition of the “Smoloskyp” Publishing House (2018), the “Metaphora” Translator’s Award (2020), and was the winner of the II Poetry Tournament and recipient of the Nestor Letopisets Award (2019). In 2019, she received a special award from “LitAktsent” for her collection of poems “Persha storinka zimi” [The First Page of Wiinter]. Kiva is the recipient of a Gaude Polonia fellowship from the Ministry of Culture of Poland (2021) and participant of the Writer’s Residency “Gnezdo” (2022) in the Vitachov town of the Kyiv Oblast’.