The awards ceremony to honor the winners of the nationwide literary competition Vytoky (Roots) was held on Sept. 1. This year the journals Soniashnyk and Kyivska Rus’ were among the organizers of the literary competition whose goal is to discover young creative talent in Ukraine. It was held for the second time by Ostroh Academy in collaboration with the national Ukrainian daily Den’/The Day, with financial support from Professor Orest Cap from the University of Manitoba.
The competition featured five nominations: Poetry, Prose, Literary Criticism, Children’s Literature, and Fantasy. According to Petro Kraliuk, deputy rector of Ostroh Academy National University, over a hundred works were submitted from various regions of Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, and Luhansk oblast, as well as the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea. Prizes and diplomas were presented to the winners of Vytoky by the co-chairmen of the supervisory board of Ostroh Academy: Mykola Zhulynsky, director of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, the noted political and public figure Liubomyr Buniak, and businessman and renowned philanthropist Mykola Stepurko.
Lidia Rybenko presented the winners with gifts on behalf of the Rivne branch of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine. In her speech she expressed the hope that the winners will go on to become artists of the word rather than amateurs and add to the treasury of works depicting Ukraine’s colorful realities.
The jury conferred the first prize in the Poetry nomination on Oksana Pukhonska from Ternopil oblast. The second and third prizes went to Ostroh Academy student Yukhym Dyshkant (fellow countryman of the Ukrainian writer and poet Borys Kharchuk from the village of Bodaky, in Zbarazh raion, Ternopil oblast) and Natalia Biletska from Mykolaiv. In the Prose nomination, the first prize was awarded to Iryna Medvedeva from Rivne. Valeria Filimonova from the urban-type village of Bilorichynske, Lutuhyn raion, in Luhansk oblast, received a consolation prize. In the Literary Criticism nomination, the first, second, and third prizes were won, respectively, by Oksana Svyryda (Kamianets-Podilsky), Kostiantyn Orobets (Kharkiv), and Ihor Rybalko (Lviv). Inna Vlasenko (Chernihiv oblast) was awarded the first prize in the Children’s Literature nomination, and Maryna Sokolian (Kyiv) won in the Fantasy standing.
Says Ihor Rybak: “After visiting Ostroh, I am impressed by its thriving educational, cultural, creative, and literary life. I will bring the best impressions back to Lviv, and I think this will serve as a powerful impetus to my colleagues. They will be encouraged to take part in the Vytoky competition, enroll in Ostroh Academy, and maintain creative collaboration between Lviv and Ostroh.”
The best works submitted by the winners of the first, second, and third prizes have been published by the publishing branch of Ostroh Academy as a separate collection entitled Vytoky and will soon be published by the journals Kyivska Rus’, Soniashnyk, and other periodicals.
Oleksii Kostiuchenko is a 1st-year student at Ostroh Academy National University
