1. Oksana Zabuzhko
Ukrainian literature in English: Oksana Zabuzhko was a member of the International Jury at Berlinale 2024 — Berlin International Film Festival. Photo: Elena Ternovaja
While we mentioned Ukrainian writer and activist Oksana Zabuzhko in our article "Ukrainian books recommendations: eight titles you need to read in English now" and suggested her thought-provoking story collection Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories to add to your reading pile, we couldn't help but include her on this list too.
Thanks to her original, poetic, "stream of consciousness" writing style and the cultural and feminist topics she has explored in her work, Oksana Zabuzhko became one of the best Ukrainian authors — the most translated and decorated ones, regardless of gender.
She's one of the Ukrainian women writers who challenges the reader, often speaking on taboo or complicated issues in her fiction. Her first semi-autobiographical novel, Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex, about a Ukrainian writer teaching at Harvard who navigates her complex relationship with her partner, is available in English. When the novel was released in 1996, it became an instant bestseller sensation in Ukraine. Since then, it has become Ukraine's most translated piece of literary fiction.
Her other books translated into English are The Museum of Abandoned Secrets and the poetry title, Selected Poems.
2. Lesia Ukrainka
Ukrainian literature in English: The illustrated photo of Lesia Ukrainka made in 1886 by Franciszek de Mezer. Photo: Public domain
One of the most legendary Ukrainian women writers and brightest stars of Ukrainian poetry is, undeniably, Lesia Ukrainka (1871–1913). Coming from a family of intellectuals, scholars, and writers, she was a multifaceted person. She was an erudite reader, critic, translator of Byron, Dante, Maeterlinck, and Heine, traveler, activist, feminist, and extraordinary poet.
During her 42 years of life, Lesia Ukrainka published three collections of poems and ten dramatic plays — poetic dramas — including The Forest Song (1911), The Stone Host (1912), Cassandra (1907), and The Orgy (1913). In her modernist and intertextual work with references to world literature, the Ukrainian author reflected on the many conflicts of a person's life — morality vs. desire, individual vs. society, and men vs. women.
Her most famous poetic drama, The Forest Song, inspired by Ukrainian folklore, is available in English translation by Percival Cundy. Through the story of Mavka, a powerful forest nymph, and her love for a mortal man, Lukash, Lesia Ukrainka digs into the theme of the relationship between nature and the human world and the personal conflict of the free-spirited Mavka and her love for Lukash.
You can find other plays and poems by one of the best Ukrainian authors in English in Lesia Ukrainka: Selected Works and Lesia Ukrainka in Translations.
3. Olena Stiazhkina
Ukrainian literature in English: Olena Stiazhkina is one of Donbas' powerful voices. Photo: Nastia Telikova
Olena Stiazhkina, a contemporary Ukrainian woman writer, has dedicated her work to investigating the concept of national identity and the experience of Russia's war and occupation. The author — a history scholar from the eastern city of Donetsk who had to flee her hometown after Russian occupation in 2014 — speaks from her personal experience in both her fiction and nonfiction.
Because of the personal touch in her work, Olena Stiazhkina is one of the best Ukrainian authors to go to learn more about Donbas. In Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary (2020), translated into English by Anne O. Fisher, the Ukrainian writer offers her eyewitness account of the early days of the Russian invasion in 2014 and an intimate look at her city and its people.
Her novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2024), also available in English, portrays the evolution of Ukraine as a nation through the story of four families in Donetsk and their personal and collective struggles as the country gains its independence and 23 years later, Russia tries to take it away.
4. Maria Matios
Ukrainian literature in English: Maria Matios is arguably one of Ukraine's most successful and best-selling authors. Photo: UkrBooks
Many describe Maria Matios as one of the most productive Ukrainian women writers working today. In her writing, Matios blends the personal, the historical, and the mystical. She draws on the folklore and history of her home region of Bukovyna and the experiences of her family, which traces its roots back to 1790.
Her work — twelve volumes of fiction and poetry — often discusses the complexities of Ukrainian identity, family, trauma, and grief. It is usually set in Bukovyna, a Ukrainian region bordering Romania that was scarred by war and occupation. Her magnum opus, Sweet Darusya, is a perfect illustration and way to get to know Matios' storytelling.
First published in Ukraine in 2003 and quite recently translated into English, Sweet Darusya tells the story of a mute woman tormented by severe headaches. The novel presents a portrait of the local Hutsul people — a community where the boundary between the ordinary and the magical is fluid — and probes into how the community and Darusia herself grapple with unresolved personal and collective trauma.
5. Sofia Andrukhovych
Ukrainian literature in English: Sofia Andrukhovych on Authors Reading Month 2015, Wrocław, Poland. Photo: Rafał Komorowski
Sofia Andrukhovych, one of the most celebrated Ukrainian women writers and the author of a story collection and four novels, has an exceptional ability to tell stories. You can always count on her to go deep into research, vividly and meticulously describing the characters and settings she's writing about.
Her award-winning prose has been translated into multiple languages. Her novel Felix Austria (2014), the English translation of which was published this year, transports the reader into the world of the western Ukrainian city of Stanislaviv during Austro-Hungarian rule in the early 20th century. Through the story of two women friends, Andrukovych shows the atmosphere of that era before the imminent war changes everything — the city's cultural landscape and the lives of its people.
Her other novel Amadoka (2020) — often regarded as her pièce de résistance — will be released in English by the American publishing house Simon & Schuster in 2025. The novel, named after the lost ancient Greek lake, looks into the Ukrainian collective memory of trauma through three of Ukraine's most agonizing historical periods: the Holocaust, Stalin's repressions, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
