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Kate Tsurkan

Culture Reporter

Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent and is partially supported by a generous grant from the Nadia Sophie Seiler Fund. Kate co-translated Oleh Sentsov’s “Diary of a Hunger Striker,” Myroslav Laiuk’s “Bakhmut,” Andriy Lyubka’s “War from the Rear,” and Khrystia Vengryniuk’s “Long Eyes,” among other books. Some of her previous writing and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine and, in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, also knows French.

k.tsurkan@kyivindependent.com
For media & speaking inquiries:
press@kyivindependent.com

Articles

Culture

The adventures of Sofia Yablonska, fearless Ukrainian travel writer of the 1930s

by Kate Tsurkan
Editor's Note: This story is part of the "Hidden Canon"  – a special series celebrating Ukrainian classic literature and aiming to bring it to a wider international audience. The series is supported by the Ukrainian Institute. The photographs featured in this article are shared with the permission of the Sofia Yablonska Foundation, which is tasked with preserving her legacy. All photographs are subject to copyright. As the opium smoke curled around her in a dim-lit room in China, the writer
Serhii Plokhy during the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Aug. 14, 2019
Culture

Historian Serhii Plokhy on Russian imperialism, de-colonization, and why Putin is so obsessed with Ukraine

by Kate Tsurkan
Even before Russia launched its full-scale war in 2022, it set the groundwork by establishing distorted narratives about its “rightful” claim to Ukraine. Misunderstandings about empire, identity, and the legacies of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union still shape Western views of Russia — and Ukraine — today. While these narratives aren’t as instantly lethal as Russian drones and missiles, they’re designed to serve the same purpose — hurting Ukraine, often in ways that reach far beyond
Ukrainian painter Ivan Marchuk
Culture

‘Shameful story’ — How Ukraine’s iconic 89-year-old painter got scammed out of rights to his own work

by Kate Tsurkan
At nearly 90, the Ukrainian painter Ivan Marchuk — widely regarded as one of the country's most important living artists — has found himself fighting in court to maintain the full creative rights to his vast body of work. Marchuk turned to the courts last year after he said that he was deceived into signing away some of the creative rights for a period of 100 years to three other people — all for Hr 10,000 ($228). The process is still ongoing. "He has not lost hope for a fair resolution of th
Culture

Loss and loneliness in a contemporary Moldovan classic

by Kate Tsurkan
From the early pages of "The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes," we are swimming in the protagonist Aleksy's grief. The story begins at a point in his late teenage years when he "hated (his mother) more than ever," and could have "killed her with a thought." She is not a source of love and strength in his life — that is, the woman who gave him life — but of utter repulsion and shame. Moldovan-Romanian author Tatiana Țîbuleac's novel, recently translated from Romanian by Monica Cure and published

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