Hope on the Page: The Power of Ukrainian Literature in Resilience and Recovery

The Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Available on-demand

In wartime Ukraine, literature is a lifeline. Discover how poetry, fiction, and children’s books fuel national resilience and forge hope amidst tragedy. Hear from leading Ukrainian writers, translators, and scholars on the power of the page in the fight for a nation’s future.

Speakers include:

Daryna Gladun (Notre Dame): “Home: Reimagined”
Tetiana Grebeniuk (Imre Kertész Kolleg; University of Warsaw): “Narratives of Hope in the Time of Hopelessness: Contemporary Ukrainian War Fiction”
Ali Kinsella (Translator): “Children’s Literature in Wartime Ukraine”
Anna Romandash (Notre Dame): “Ukraine’s Contemporary Literature after the 2022 Russian Invasion: A Powerful Message of Hope Amid Adversity”

Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine is a collaboration between Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, and Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). The conference, hosted at the University of Notre Dame in March 2025, focused on the positive and corrective response to this destruction, exploring reasons for hope, sources of hope, and the politics and ethics of hope in Ukraine. How is hope powerful or even revolutionary? How does it encourage resilience and recovery? And, above all, how can we build and promote the integral development of hope in Ukraine? The conference explored the concept, dynamics, and practices of hope through keynote addresses, panel discussions, the arts, and liturgical observances. For more information visit the event website.

Co-sponsors included:

Literature as a Bulwark Against Aggression

In the opening days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, as air raid sirens wailed across Ukraine, poetry began to circulate on WhatsApp—a salve and a beacon of resistance. This powerful image, shared by panel chair Rory Finnen, set the stage for a profound discussion on the strategic importance of literature as a source of national resilience. He noted how the defiant works of the shistdesiatnyky (the Sixties generation), including poets like Lina Kostenko and Vasyl Symonenko, were shared widely, arming a nation with its own cultural memory. The panel gathered to explore the critical significance of poetry, fiction, and children’s literature in a nation at war, examining how creative expression becomes an essential tool for survival, memory, and hope.

Reclaiming Home and Memory Through Poetry

The profound connection between poetry, place, and identity was explored by poet Darina Hladun. She shared the story of the Bucha Poetry Group, a vibrant artistic community formed long before the 2022 massacre made the town’s name infamous. In a powerful refutation of Russian propaganda, Hladun noted that the group includes ethnically Russian and Belarusian members who suffered alongside their Ukrainian neighbors. The massacre, she explained, did not inspire poetry; rather, it forced the members “to choose either to use our poetry to remember or to forget. And it just so happened that we chose to remember.” Hladun analyzed Laski Pśpanasuk’s book, Letters of the alphabet go to war, focusing on the harrowing process of reimagining “home.” A pivotal prose essay within the collection, “The shoe full of water”—which recounts a dream of detonating a mine in one’s own apartment—splits the book into a “before and after,” marking the point where home is irrevocably transformed into a ruin contaminated by war and public spectacle.

War Fiction and the Search for Cautious Optimism

Contemporary Ukrainian war fiction, as scholar Tatiana Rybak explained, grapples with the immense challenge of finding meaning amidst overwhelming pain. Using “metamodernism” as a framework, she identified two key features that allow hope to emerge from despair: the “need for we,” an empathetic drive to connect, and a deep-seated “cautious optimism.” This optimism is not naive; it is rooted in historical consciousness and intergenerational continuity, often represented by the child who embodies the nation’s future. Rybak illustrated this complex hope with an example from a war story, where a chaplain explains a faith grounded in paradox: “God is love but there is also one place in him where there is no love… I believe because it is absurd.” This perspective, she argued, culminates in the comparison of Ukraine to the biblical Job—a figure who lost everything but survived through faith to flourish again.

Children’s Literature: Crafting Hope and Processing Trauma

Translator Ali Kinsella surveyed the vital role of children’s literature, describing it as a tool for both processing trauma and shaping the identity of the next generation. She situated the current moment in a powerful historical context, noting that the post-2014 publishing boom was anchored by an earlier “incredible coup”: the publication of Harry Potter in Ukrainian before the Russian version, which “shifted a whole generation of young readers into Ukrainian literature.” This boom contrasts with the plummet in children’s book sales after 2022. Kinsella evaluated two categories of war-related books that have emerged: those confronting the “brutal reality” for a domestic audience and sanitized versions “for export.” These books employ mythmaking (a tractor pulling a tank), art therapy, and, starkly, the dehumanization of the enemy as a necessary survival mechanism for a nation’s youngest citizens.

Conclusion: The Human Cost and the Unbreakable Spirit

Journalist Anna Romandash confronted the devastating human cost of the war on Ukraine’s literary community, framing it as a direct assault on the nation’s cultural future. She shared the sobering statistic that at least 235 Ukrainian writers have been killed since the full-scale invasion. The stories of authors like Oleksandr Menov, who wrote a hopeful memoir about life under occupation in Kherson only to be killed two weeks before its publication, and Victoria Amelina, a celebrated writer killed by a Russian missile strike, powerfully illustrate this tragic loss. Yet, as the panel concluded, their work endures. Despite immense tragedy, Ukrainian literature continues to be a vibrant, decentralized, and powerful source of hope—a testament to an unbreakable spirit that is finding new life in publishing houses and literary festivals thriving in small towns across the country.

• Literature is a primary tool of national resilience. From the first days of the invasion, poetry and fiction have served as essential resources for emotional survival and cultural defense in Ukraine.

• Writers are radically reimagining the concept of “home.” In the face of physical destruction and trauma, Ukrainian literature explores the painful process of reclaiming and redefining home after it has been turned into a ruin.

• Hope in wartime is cautious and empathetic. Contemporary war fiction avoids simple optimism, instead finding hope in the “need for we”—the drive for human connection—and a deep awareness of historical continuity.

• Children’s books serve a dual wartime purpose. They are created both to help Ukrainian children process the brutal reality of their experiences and to craft new national myths of strength and survival for the next generation.

• The war is a direct assault on Ukraine’s cultural future. Russia is physically eliminating Ukrainian writers, with at least 235 killed, making the act of writing and publishing an explicit form of resistance against cultural erasure.

• “The massacre was a great tragedy designed and executed by Russian soldiers. It did not inspire local writers to write poetry. It forced us to choose either to use our poetry to remember or to forget. And it just so happened that we chose to remember.” — Darina Hladun

• “God is love but there is also one place in him where there is no love… I believe because it is absurd.” — Tatiana Rybak

• “We see that Russians are dehumanized and I think that this is basically unacceptable in books in English which is why they will not be translated but I think it’s very important that they’re being dehumanized because it’s the only way to survive the war.” — Ali Kinsella

• “As of today there have been at least 235 Ukrainian writers who were killed after the start of the fullscale Russian invasion.” — Anna Romandash

• She channeled the late Victoria Amelina, who wrote that while “the West is still discussing should we cancel Russian literature… For Russia this is really not an issue because they are canceling Ukrainian literature quite physically…” — Anna Romandash