
Looking at Women Looking at War – the life and work of Victoria Amelina
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Join Libreria at Second Home, as we host readings and a panel discussion about the late-writer and war reporter, Victoria Amelina. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Then she became someone new: a war crimes […]
Second Home, Spitalfields LibreriaJoin Libreria at Second Home, as we host readings and a panel discussion about the late-writer and war reporter, Victoria Amelina.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Then she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author.
Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book.
On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.
About the author:
Victoria Amelina was killed by a Russian missile in July, 2023. She was an award-winning Ukrainian novelist, essayist, poet, and human rights activist whose prose and poems have been translated into many languages. In 2019/2020 she lived and traveled extensively in the US. She wrote both in Ukrainian and English, and her essays have appeared in Irish Times, Dublin Review of Books, and Eurozine.
Our guest speakers on the night:
Christina Lamb is Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times and a bestselling author. She has reported on conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine, always particularly focusing on women, and has won 20 major awards, most recently a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Journalism. She has written ten books including Our Bodies Their Battlefield; What War does to Women and co-authoring the global bestseller I Am Malala
Charlotte Higgins is chief culture writer of the Guardian. Her latest book, Greek Myths: A New Retelling, is published by Jonathan Cape.
Dr Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. Khromeychuk has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Prospect and The New Statesman, and has delivered a TED talk on ‘What the World Can Learn From Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy’.
Sasha Dovzhyk is a Ukrainian writer, editor, and cultural manager. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guardian, New Lines, Index of Censorship, CNN, and others.
Yaryna Grusha is a Ukrainian writer, translator, and publicist.She translated Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women, Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary into Italian for Guanda.
Tetiana Teren is a Ukrainian journalist, cultural manager, and a former executive director of PEN Ukraine (2018-2025).