An important task for enrolling to the kmbs MBA program is writing an essay. Sometimes managers perform this task easily and sometimes with a challenge, it suits best for revealing the potential participant’s way of thinking and experience.

For the third year in a row, kmbs together with PEN Ukraine and Ukrainian authors, is researching the essay genre during the mini-festival, Essay Days 2020.

This year the event began with Andrii Liubka’s lecture, a writer who defined the essay as a small work with an arbitrary composition, which contains the author's attempt to rethink a certain story or phenomenon, inviting the reader to co-create.

A successful essay, in addition to the above said, distinguishes the author's voice among others. It includes rethinking the topic through one's own biography and a set of stylistic characteristics that make writing recognizable.

Watch Andrii Liubka’s lecture

Art critic Diana Klochko emphasized that one of the ways to develop Ukrainian essays is to describe art work.

“Looking at what is happening in the artist’s studio, rather than on the canvas, you can better understand the secrets of the artist's work,” she quoted French writer Pascal Quignard.

While French authors have long been involved in the conversation about the visual art, the Ukrainian tradition had no descriptions of works of art from the time of Yaroslav the Wise. We are used to looking at work with approval and being silent, and the real reaction, the intention to describe a work of art is absent in our culture.

Watch Diana Klochko’s lecture

Journalist Yurii Makarov started a conversation about opinion journalism with a provocative question: what does a journalist have to say, if in the classical sense, he is just a witness? The image of the detached observer was formed in the British tradition, but is such perception today a standard or conventionality?

In one hour, Yurii gave many examples of objective journalism losing its value, being deceptive or simply false. And also showed cases when opinion journalism allowed to convey reality through the subjective, author’s view.

One way or another, the universal principle remains the same: a journalist must not lie, distort information or manipulate the reader. It can be followed in different ways: through an observation of events or a subjective message to the reader.

Watch a lecture by Yurii Makarov

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Kyiv Essay Days is a mini-festival designed to promote the essay genre, to draw attention to the famous essayists’ work, as well as to introduce Ukrainian essays into the global context.

The author's voice in the essay, a subjective view of art and thought journalism