The magazine was founded by the US-based Ukrainian Cultural Initiatives association. The first issue of the magazine has been launched in our capital city.
The founders of the project believe that despite the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine and the difficult political and economic situation, modern Ukrainian culture is following the most fashionable European cultural trends in its development. Therefore, it is high time to provide our culture with an international platform, to make Ukraine better known and understood abroad.
“No such publication has ever existed in the US or in other English-speaking countries,” asserted its editor-in-chief Inna Golovakha. “There are wonderful culture-themed magazines in Ukraine, but they are aimed only at the Ukrainian readership. There are many Ukrainian diaspora publications in the US that serve diaspora communities, but they do not reach into the broader American audience and tell very little about the cultural life of modern Ukraine. We have gathered the best Ukrainian voices for the magazine, including journalists, scholars, and art critics who will help English-speaking Americans learn more about the culture of Ukraine and lives of Ukrainians...”
In the first issue, the project’s contributors revealed various aspects of the Ukrainians’ cultural life, ranging from literature (texts by Ihor Bondar-Tereshchenko and Vasyl Karpiuk) and cinema (Serhii Trymbach) to the culture of anti-cafe (Daria Nikolaieva) and contemporary music (Oleksandr Riabin). For instance, the phenomenon of the Hutsul theater is dealt with by Yurii Atamaniuk, while the story of the Ukrainian artist Zinaida Serebriakova, her escape to France in 1924 and the exhibition she held in the US is told by the art historian Mykhailo Krasikov. According to the editorial team, the section “Foreigners in Ukraine” and “Ukrainians in the World” will become regular. It has already featured Maryna Hrymych telling the reader about the Ukrainian diaspora in Brazil, and Peter Santenello from San Francisco describing the life of an American in Kyiv.
The first issue of the magazine was created by American contributing editors Birgit Meade, Penelope Bell, Elvis Vasquez, Sylvia Ortega, William Hicks, and artist and designer Oleksii Chekal.
Golovakha said that the magazine was to appear quarterly both on paper and online. It will be distributed through subscription, social networks, and a web page. The first issue of the magazine is already freely available on the Internet.
“It is time for us to begin to debunk the myths about Ukraine that Russia has imposed on the world,” first deputy chairman of the State TV and Radio Committee Bohdan Chervak noted at the launch. “Therefore, the emergence of an English-language magazine that will tell about Ukraine from a modern perspective and promote Ukraine in the English-speaking world is definitely an extremely important event...”
At the same time, Chervak expressed hope that the magazine will be promoted not only in the US, but throughout the English-speaking world where Ukraine has lacked decisive influence so far due to the Russian information invasion. “We will help the magazine to become a long-term project which will allow the world to look at Ukraine and learn about it not through the distorting glasses of Russian propaganda, but through the prism of objective journalism,” Chervak emphasized.
