Victoria Amelina

Viktoriia Yuriyivna Amelina (Shalamay; Вікторія Юріївна Амеліна; 1 January 1986 – 1 July 2023), later known as Victoria Amelina, was a Ukrainian novelist and war crimes researcher. She was the author of two novels and a children's book, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award and a European Union Prize for Literature finalist.

Early life and education
Victoria Amelina was born in Lviv. She emigrated to Canada with her father at the age of fourteen, then returned to Ukraine soon after. At age 15, she was chosen to represent Lviv at a Russian-language contest in Moscow. After completing a degree in computer science in Lviv, Amelina started her career in IT before becoming a full-time writer and poet in 2015.

Writing
From 2015, when her first book Синдром листопаду, або Homo Compatiens (The Fall Syndrome: about, or Homo Compatiens) was published, she dedicated her time solely to writing. Her debut novel deals with the events at Maidan in 2014; the foreword was written by Yurii Izdryk. The novel has received several literary awards, and was welcomed by critics and scholars from Ukraine and wider Europe.

In 2016, Amelina published a book for children called Хтось, або водяне серце (Somebody, or Water Heart).

In 2017, she published a novel, Дім для Дома (Dom's Dream Kingdom), about the family of a Soviet colonel who in the 1990s lived in the former childhood apartment in Lviv of the Polish Jewish author Stanisław Lem. The novel was short-listed for the LitAkcent literary award in 2017. and European Union Prize for Literature in 2019. In 2023 Amelina was offered a UK publishing deal for the book.

Amelina was a member of PEN International. In 2018, she took part in 84th World PEN Congress in India as a delegate from Ukraine and gave a speech on Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner in Russia Oleg Sentsov. In 2021 she received the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize. That same year, she started a literature festival in the Donetsk region.

In 2022, she started writing poetry as well. She explained her motivations for this, saying ""That's what war leaves you. The sentences are as short as possible, the punctuation a redundant luxury, the plot unclear, but every word carries so much meaning. All this applies to poetry as well as to war". Her prose and poems have been translated into numerous other languages.

In June 2023 Amelina was awarded a yearlong residency in Paris for displaced Ukrainian writers. She planned to use the residency to finish her most recent book, Looking at Women Looking at War, described as "a diary of about a dozen women, including [herself], pursuing justice". She was killed before her residency started.

Wartime work
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, she worked as a war crimes researcher for Truth Hounds, a Ukrainian organization. She used her training as a novelist to interview witnesses.

In September 2022, while doing research in the Izium region, she uncovered the war diary of fellow Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who had been killed by the occupying forces in March 2022. In May 2023, Vakulenko received a posthumous award from the International Publishers Association, which Amelina accepted on his behalf.

Amelina also hosted internally displaced Ukrainians and helped to deliver humanitarian aid in Lviv.

Personal life and death
Amelina had a son in the early 2010s.

As of 2022, Amelina lived in Kyiv. In June 2023, after receiving a residency in Paris, Amelina considered moving there with her 12-year-old son.

On 27 June 2023, she was injured during the Russian attack on Kramatorsk while she was dining at RIA Pizza together with Héctor Abad, Sergio Jaramillo and Catalina Gómez. The restaurant was hit by an Iskander missile. Amelina died due to her injuries on 1 July at the Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro at the age of 37. She was buried in Lviv.

In 2023, a tribute to Amelina, Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened, was published by Arrowsmith Press. It included international contributions and previously published work by Amelina in English translation.

Anthologies

 * «Це зробила вона, She Did It» (Видавництво «Видавництво», 2017)
 * «Лялька, Doll» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2018)
 * «Мости замість стін, Bridges Instead of Walls» (Видавництво Старого Лева, 2020)
 * «Що дасть нам силу?, What Gives Us Strength» (Дух і літера, 2020)
 * «Ковчег „Титанік". 20 есеїв про людство зразка 2020–го, The Arc Called Titanic. 20 Essays on Humanity of 2020» (онлайн-антологія 27 Bookforum, 2020)

Awards

 * Order of Merit, 3rd class (22 January 2024, posthumously)