Vira Vovk

Vira Ostapivna Selianska (Ві́ра Оста́півна Селя́нська, pen name Vira Vovk (Ві́ра Вовк; 2 January 1926 – 16 July 2022) was a Ukrainian writer, critic and translator. She wrote in Ukrainian, German and Portuguese.

Biography
Born in Boryslav in 1926, she grew up in the Hutsul region in the town of Kuty (at that time on the Polish-Romanian border). Vira Vovk's secondary education was completed in Lviv and Dresden. She studied Germanics, music history and comparative literature at the University of Tübingen. In 1945, she emigrated with her mother to Portugal and in 1949, further to Brazil. She went to Rio de Janeiro where she completed her university studies. Post graduate studies were completed at Columbia University (New York City) and Munich University.

Vovk received a PhD and became professor of German literature at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Vovk has created ten collections of poetry, ten novels, and eleven plays and has made numerous translations of Western writers into Ukrainian and Ukrainian writers into Portuguese.

Vovk died on 16 July 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the age 96.

Awards and achievements
She received the Ivan Franko Literary award in 1957, 1979, 1982 and 1990, the Blahovist award 2000. She actively propagated Ukrainian culture and language. In 2008, Vovk received Ukrainian state award Shevchenko National Prize.