Recently, in Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, there was an annual award ceremony of laureates of 2026 Vasyl Stus Prize. This year, the honorable award went to Professor of the Department of Classical Philology of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, writer, and translator Andriy Sodomora.
Along with Andriy Sodomora, author and opinion writer Olena Stiazhkina was also a laureate of 2026 Vasyl Stus Prize. This annual award goes to authors to honour their particular contribution to Ukrainian culture and the resilience of their civic position. This year, the Prize has been awarded for the 37th time, and 70 artists have received it.
The laureates of Vasyl Stus Prize received a statuette created by designer Dmytro Pokrason and sculptor Stanislav Kadochnykov, along with a cash prize.
In his speech during the award ceremony, Andriy Sodomora thanked the committee for high appraisal of his translation activities and emphasised on the particular importance of receiving the prize named after Vasyl Stus. “Any recognition during the war is a great honour and a responsibility as all our attention, respect, and love above all belong to those who are on the firing line. Antique artists believed that one can become a poet by birth, and the same goes for the warriors. Vasyl Stus was born a poet and a warrior. ‘What a wonderful being is the man if he is truly a man,’ – these might be the most influential words of the Antiquity. Vasyl Stus showed the example of how in such a short life, by developing one’s innate potential, one can become this wonderful being, a man. A man who managed to combine willpower of steel and the finite nature of soul structures”, Andriy Sodomora emphasised.
We congratulate Andriy Sodomora on receiving the award and wish him inspiration and enthusiasm towards his work, new influential breakthroughs, and indestructible love for the Written Word.