The ROARing Times: Linor Goralik in Conversation with Artemii Levkoy on War Poetry

On 17 May, ONRS will host an interview with Linor Goralik, one of the most prominent authors writing in Russian today. Linor was born in 1975 to a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro, Ukraine), part of the Ukrainian SSR in the USSR. Her family emigrated to Israel in 1989. From 1991 to 1994, she studied computer science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba. In 1999, she published her first poetry collection. From 2000 to 2014, Goralik lived in Moscow, working as a journalist and marketing analyst. During this period, she organised numerous art exhibitions and projects, introducing contemporary Israeli culture to Moscow. In 2002, she held her solo exhibition, "Pity without Looking". She has taught marketing at the Stockholm School of Economics and fashion theory at the Higher School of Economics. Linor regularly contributes to magazines such as Fashion Theory and New Literary Review. In February 2013, she recorded an address supporting the Russian LGBT community. After Crimea's annexation in 2014, she returned to Israel but continued travelling between the two countries until November 2021. Now, she is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin's regime and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In August 2023, Goralik was labelled a "foreign agent" by Russia's Ministry of Justice for opposing Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. The interview will focus on the Resistance and Opposition Arts Review (ROAR), a bimonthly online publication Linor initiated in March 2022 after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ROAR publishes poetry, essays, prose, plays, as well as visual art, multimedia projects, and music that speak out against war and repression, violence and propaganda. We will also discuss Linor's recent novel Bobo and hear some of her poetry in Russian and English. Our Cultural Events Secretary Artemii Levkoy, a published poet and philologist, will lead the conversation. Part of the profits from the event will be donated to Volunteer-86, a humanitarian aid centre in Kharkiv, Ukraine.