Ukrainian poet Olena Boryspholets will read from a collection that carries the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Ukraine's steppe and Black Sea to the United States at Cornell on Nov. 10.
The Ithaca City of Asylum writer-in-residence's program, "Don't Look Back," begins at 5 p.m. in the Guerlac Room of the A.D. White House, according to Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences.
Reading opens series on Eurydice
Boryspholets will read from "Orpheus and Eurydice in New York" in the first of a series of events involving Eurydice this academic year and next, said Athena Kirk, an associate professor of classics.
The Department of Classics and the Society for the Humanities sponsor the reading, with support from Ithaca City of Asylum.
Boryspholets also wrote the short-story collection "Ukrainian Detox" and the long-form poem "New Calypso."
She is a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and PEN America and a co-founder of Creativity Without Borders.
Kitchen Theatre performance follows
After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Boryspholets spent a year in Poland acting in the Polish-Ukrainian production "Life in Case of War."
She was a research scholar at the University of Pittsburgh from 2023 to 2026, is now a research scholar at Chatham University and has held a City of Asylum Fellowship for Ukrainian Writers residency since 2023, according to Cornell.
On Nov. 13, she will perform at Ithaca's Kitchen Theatre in "New Calypso," appearing as both author and actor alongside musician Lesya Verba, who plays the bandura, a Ukrainian folk instrument.
The poetic musical-theater performance addresses war, politicians' hypocrisy and destruction by dictators, Cornell said.
Ithaca City of Asylum co-sponsors that event, and a Humanities Impact Grant supports the programs.
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