"When our statehood was being killed, when it was destroyed and did not exist, there were always people-institutions who held the phenomenon of Ukraine. We sincerely care about finding such people, their nature, their influence, their responsibility, their leadership. Vasyl Stus once said that a person must always feel the sole duty – "to be a grateful son of the land." This is characteristic of the entire cohort of people of this type, who, as people-institutions, carried, carry, and will carry Ukraine's ability to self-reproduce, to develop, to give us the feeling that we have a future. Taras Voznyak belongs to such people," emphasized the dean of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, jury member of the Vasyl Stus Prize Oleksandr Savruk.

Let us remind you that the Vasyl Stus Prize was founded in 1989 by the Ukrainian Association of Independent Creative Intelligentsia led by Yevhen Sverstiuk (1928-2014). It is awarded annually to writers, artists, directors, musicians, cultural managers for their contribution to Ukrainian culture and the resilience of their civic position.

Since 2016, the Ukrainian PEN, Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and the publishing house "Spirit and Letter" have taken on the continuation of this initiative.

More than 70 Ukrainians have become laureates of the Vasyl Stus Prize in previous years, among them – Opanas Zalyvakha, Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Vasyl Ovsiienko, Ivan Svitlychny, Yevhen Zakharov, Volodymyr Viatrovych, Maria Burmaka, Sashko Polozhynskyi, Taras Kompanychenko, the Telnyuk sisters, Oleksandra Koval, Serhiy Zhadan, Borys Gudziak, Akhtem Seitablayev.

Candidates for the Prize this year were nominated by a jury consisting of: Myroslav Marynovych – jury chairman, publicist, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, honorary president of the Ukrainian PEN; Akhtem Seitablayev – actor, director, director of the State Enterprise "Crimean House", laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize for 2020; Andriy Kurkov – Ukrainian writer, president of the Ukrainian PEN; Bohumila Berdykhovska – publicist, head of the scholarship department of the National Culture Center in Warsaw; Olya Hnatiuk – researcher, professor at NaUKMA and Warsaw University, vice president of the Ukrainian PEN; Yurko Prokhasko – essayist, translator; Oleksandr Savruk – dean of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School; Eleonora Solovey – literary scholar; Dmytro Stus – director of the Shevchenko Museum; Leonid Finberg – chief editor of the publishing house "Spirit and Letter".

Photo – Oleksandr Kulykov

Taras Voznyak became the laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize 2021