Writing, War, Connection – a reflection on recent events

University of Chichester digital writer in residence Volodymyr Rafeienko, Guardian foreign correspondent and author Luke Harding, and poet Sasha Dugdale talk about the act of witnessing through writing, and the effects of connection with other writers through times of war and great upheaval.

This one-off event featured Volodymyr Rafeienko, who was recently awarded a digital writing residency by the University of Chichester. As part of the agreement, Volodymyr was remotely engaging with Chichester students and was sharing his experiences of war.

The digital residency was a collaboration between the University, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Stephen Spender Trust, and was supported through the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute.

Guest speakers

Celebrated Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Rafeienko: Recognised in Ukraine as one of its leading writers, Volodymyr wrote in Russian until fleeing the Donetsk region to Kyiv, following attacks by Russian-backed separatists in 2014. In 2019, he published his first novel in Ukrainian, Mondegreen (songs about death and love). The book has since been shortlisted for Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. He also translated Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich’s famed War’s Unwomanly Face into Ukrainian.

Guardian foreign correspondent and author Luke Harding: Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and has also covered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He is the author of Mafia State and co-author of Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (nominated for the Orwell Prize) and The Snowden Files. Two of Harding’s books have been made into films; the Fifth Estate and Snowden.

Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale: Sasha Dugdale has published five collections of poems with Carcanet, most recently Deformations in 2020. She won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2016 and in 2017 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Prize for Poetry. She is former editor of Modern Poetry in Translation and poet-in-residence at St John’s College, Cambridge (2018-2020).

The authors’ books can be purchased here uk.bookshop.org/lists/writing-war-connection