Bio
Olesia Mamchych was born in Kyiv in 1981. In 2003, she graduated from Kyiv University, named after Taras Shevchenko, where she studied creative writing. Her first poem appeared in the children’s magazine “Sunflower” in 1992, when she was 11, and her first collection, “Perekotybole,” was published in 2004. Her other collections include “The Cover” (2014), “The Sun on Maternity Leave,” (2014), “The Ideal Home” (unpublished, 2015-2020), and “Love is as defenseless as a knife” (2024).
Olesia Mamchych has also published her translations from Polish, as well as 11 books for children.
She was the recipient of the Blagovist Award in 2006, the Urba-Crossing Award in 2014, the Top Barabuka Award (2020), Lviv BookForum Best Book Award (2021), and the Lesia Ukrainka Award (2022). In 2021, Mamchych received the Lane Kirkland Scholarship Program in Kraków, Poland, and in 2026 she was a winner of the Homines Urbani, literary residency programme at Villa Decius, Kraków).
Some of her poems are translated into 14 languages, and her poems for children are part of a school curriculum.
She works as an editor, providing a Polish-Ukrainian literary online magazine, Posestry.eu (a project of the Polish Book Institute), from 2021 to 2025, she lived in Kraków. Since autumn 2025, Mamchych has been living again in her native city, Kyiv, Ukraine.
She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
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