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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ГРУДЕНЬ 2017 WWW. UNWLA .ORG 1 5 Getting to Know You At the recommendation of Ivanka Olesnycky, UNWLA Liaison for Members - at - Large, we are launch- ing a new column introducing women who have recently joined the organization as MALs. Introducing and Welcoming New UNWLA MAL Olena Jennings Olena’s grandparents were from a small village on the outskirts of Kharkiv. Her mother was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany. The family emigrated from Germany and settled on a small farm in Lancaster, Wisconsin, and then decided to move to Milwaukee , wh ich had a vibrant Ukrainian community that included two Ukrainian churches. It was in Milwaukee that Olena was born and raised. Olena’s mother and father (whose ethnic roots are Irish and Scottish) met in Massachusetts while her mother w as a student at Har vard Summer School. The family l ived with Olena’s grandparents , and it was here that Olena learned to speak Ukrainian. Her mother read to her from Ukrainian children’s books until she was able to read them herself. She recalls her struggles w ith certain le tters. “ I remembered not being allowed to get up and go play until I read the letter ч (Ed. Note : transliteration “ch”) correctly. ” Olena recalls a home full of sweets. Her grandmother loved to bake , and Olena’s fa vorite dessert was makivnyk . She and her grandmother baked Easter paskas together and she recalls going to church for midnight mass with a basket of paska and decorated eggs to be blessed. Her childhood activities included membership in the Dnipro Ukrainian dance group . Founded by he r uncle, the group danced at a Milwau- kee festival called the Folk Fair. When Olena started college, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and attended Harvard Summer School. This was the first time she met people her own age from Ukraine , and she was hap py she was able to speak with them in Ukrainian . She notes that she “ felt free to speak, free to make mistakes when saying what was on my mind ,” a dramatic change for someone who was usually shy. It was at Harvard that Olena met Virlana Tkacz , creator and director of Yara Arts Group . She par- ticipated in one of Yara’s performances , The Messenger . She continues her work with Vir lana and Yara in various ways to this day and has written several articles about Yara productions for Our Life magazine. (The first was published in the September 2013 issue; s ubsequent articles appeared in the May 2014, Feb- ruary 2017, and October 2017 issues. ) Before Olena f inished college, her mother found an ad in the Ukrainian Weekly advertising a Mas- ter’s program in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies focusing on Ukrainian literature , which was be- ing offered at the University of Alberta. Olena decided to apply and was given a scholarship. It was in Alberta that she had her first experience with translation (translating Nat alka Bilotserkivets’ poetry col- lection Allergy ), a skill that she has honed over the years. Since then , she has translat ed the works of var- ious Ukrainian poets, including Halyna Kruk, Taras Malkovych, Anna Malihon, and Iryna Shuvalova. Her translations hav e been published in Chelsea , Poetry International , Wolf , and other journals. Her own po- etry was translated into Ukrainian in 2016 as part of the Anthology of Young US Poets , edited by Taras Malkovych. T he poems in the anthology were selections from her boo k Songs from An Apartment , which was published by Underground Books in 2017. Olena travel ed to Lviv and Kyiv to participate in public presentations of the anthology. She has also worked with Ukrainian writer Oksana Lutsyshyna on transla- tions ; their transla tions of Kateryna Kalytko’s war poetry can be found in Words for War (Academic Stud- ies Press 2017) . In 2004 , Olena moved to New York to work on an MFA in writing fiction at Columbia University. She has since read selections from her work at NTSh’s Literary Bazaars, at the Ukrainian In- stitute, and at the Ukrainian Museum. Last year she became a member of NTSh. Olena’s first novel will be released early in 2018. The work is titled Shut Mouth and is a reflection on the secrets people keep, focusing in part on the hidden scars of war and displacement. A new book, tentatively titled Memory Project , uses photographs from her grandparents’ first years in the United States as inspiration for poems. Our new MAL notes: “I a m honored to be a part of Soyuz Ukrainok . I hope to be able to share my writing with UNWLA members and help members grow in their own writing.”
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