The “Unwritten” project: Participants of the “Memory Polis” Forum

On August 29, 2024, the project The Unwritten was officially launched by writer and combat medic Olena Herasymiuk together with writer and serviceman Yevhen Lir. They began compiling the list back in spring 2023, when it included 48 names. Today, it contains more than 275 individuals — authors, writers, editors, journalists, cultural managers, and others.

Olena Herasymiuk took part in the “Memory Polis” forum organized by VETERANKA at the KSE Dragon Capital Building on January 23.

“For us, this is a deeply personal story. Some of these authors were our acquaintances, friends, colleagues. Beyond the objective need to systematize this information, there is also a subjective factor — these are people from our profession, from our environment,” Yevhen Lir said in an interview with LiRoom.

Later, the team began expanding the list publicly, receiving information from relatives, friends, and acquaintances of the fallen. An update to the list does not always mean that someone new has been killed; often it means the team has discovered another name that had not received sufficient attention.

The project explains that “people of literature” include writers, poets, translators, editors, proofreaders, publishers, printing house workers, librarians, cultural managers — anyone who, in one way or another, shapes Ukraine’s literary space.

The team seeks to identify the names of fallen literary figures from the very beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014. According to Yevhen Lir, the website was created by the Digital Volunteers team, while a group of volunteers helps search for names by interviewing families and friends of the fallen and locating their books.

“Russia’s goal is to force us into silence. But we will do our small part for future generations, so that we do not fade into history. So that those who come after us will have no doubt about the price paid for Ukraine’s freedom,” Olena Herasymiuk previously noted in a comment to Suspilne Culture.

Last year, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the central events of the Ukrainian stand was the performance Echoes, created by Olena Herasymiuk together with poet Pavlo Matiusha.

Olena and Pavlo wrote a cycle of poems based on ten quotes by fallen and missing Ukrainian authors. Holding posters with these quotations, they later passed them into the audience, inviting listeners to take part in remembrance. The performance was joined by volunteers, including well-known publishers, cultural figures, ministers from different countries, Members of the European Parliament, and representatives of EU governmental institutions.

The performance concluded with a minute of silence and the placing of names of the fallen onto the Wall of Memory of the “Unwritten” — a space where the names of Ukrainian literary figures whose lives were taken by Russia are gathered. Among the 263 names are Illia Chernilevskyi, Victoria Amelina, Maksym Kryvtsov, and Volodymyr Vakulenko.

Delegations from national stands visited the Wall, and some international guests invited others to approach it in their own languages.