Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
August 13 marked the 60th anniversary of the birth of a famous modern Ukrainian writer. Stepan Vasylevich Protsiuk is a modern Ukrainian writer, prose writer and essayist, literary critic, teacher, and candidate of philological sciences.
Author of over 30 books; winner of a number of literary awards, including the Golden Writer of Ukraine award. Member of Ukrainian PEN. Stepan Protsiuk is one of the most popular contemporary Ukrainian intellectual writers.
Interesting facts from the biography
Stepan Vasilyevich Protsiuk was born on August 13, 1964 in the village of Kuty, Busk district, Lviv region, into the family of a political prisoner.
A few years later, the family moved to the Ivano-Frankivsk region, where Stepan graduated from high school.
The future writer's childhood and youth were so difficult that in his mature years he was even surprised that he "remained alive and well." His father, Vasyl Protsiuk, graduated from the Philology Department of the Pedagogical Institute and was preparing for the position of district inspector, but he was sentenced to 5 years for "bourgeois nationalism."
Stepan Protsiuk graduated from the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute and postgraduate studies at the Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
He has a PhD in Philology. He taught modern Ukrainian literature at the Precarpathian University in Ivano-Frankivsk. Students spoke of their teacher as follows:: "Stepan Protsiuk is truly unusual. He is the type of educated, erudite, expressive intellectual with a whirlwind of fragrant verbal whirlwind that immediately sweeps and envelops. With his unbridled expression, he resembles a historian and a writer, and there is also some barely perceptible magic in him that we loved..." On January 17, 1995, Stepan Protsiuk became a member of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine, and on September 30, 2012, he announced on his Facebook page that he was a member of the Ukrainian Center of the International PEN Club.
In 2017, S. Protsyuk left the Writers' Union. When asked: "Why?" he answered: "... because I didn’t see myself there anymore. There are different people among the NSPU. There are people there who I like. There were many people there who believed that I had betrayed them with my “exit”. But I am convinced that the Union has outlived itself. Absolutely… I have nothing against any person who is a member of that union, I am only against the structure itself, which has outlived itself… I set a high bar for myself. Although, you know, many people say that I could rest on my laurels. But over the years, my demands on myself have only grown.”
In 2020, Stepan Protsiuk voluntarily left his position as an associate professor at the Precarpathian University in Ivano-Frankivsk and switched to creative work, because, as he himself said, "The mysterious life of the human psyche has truly become my great interest... writing books, if it is not a fake or an imitation, requires not only talent and constant improvement, but also dedication... My hard work as a writer is the meaning of my life."
Literary activity and creative output
Stepan Protsiuk is a Ukrainian writer with a body of work of over 30 books. He is called the “master of psychological prose”, “one of the most controversial (controversial, debatable) intellectual writers”. S. Protsiuk’s literary activity began in 1991 with the literary group “New Degeneration”, which he was a member of together with Ivan Andrusiak and Ivan Tsyperdyuk. According to literary critics, this literary group managed to become one of the few destroyers of stagnation in the literature of that period. In 1992, their first collective poetry collection “On the Edge of Two Truths” was published with a foreword by Yuriy Andrukhovych. In 1996, Protsiuk’s collection of poems “Apologetics at Dawn” and a collection of poems “Always and Never” were published, and then he stopped writing poetry and switched to prose and essays.
The writer's first prose works were a collection of essays "Knights of the Pen and Coffee Houses" and a book of prose "Transgression in the Vacuum" (1996). In 2002, Stepan Protsiuk made his debut as a novelist with the socio-psychological novel "Infection", at the same time he published his second novel - "Sacrifice" in the magazine "Kur'yer Kryvbasu" (published as a separate book in 2007), and in 2005 the third novel - "Totem" was published. What are these and other subsequent works of the writer about? As the author himself says: "In short, I write about man, his suffering, the path to joy, his search for inner light. S. Protsiuk wrote three novels about Ukrainian classic writers: Vasyl Stefanyk, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Arkhip Teslenko. Three more novels are about the Soviet past of the 70s ("Grasses Cannot Die"), the 50s ("Fingers Between the Sand", and the 30s - 70s ("The Tenth Line").
A separate facet of Stepan Protsyuk's writing talent is literature for teenagers. In 2008, the love trilogy "Mariyka and Kostyk" was published (the third book of the trilogy - "Argonauts" was included in the program of studying Ukrainian literature in high school). In the same year, the book "Stepan Protsyuk about Vasyl Stefanyk, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Arkhip Teslenko, Carl-Gustav Jung and Nika Turbina" was published in the series "Life of Outstanding Children". In 2016, the publishing house "Teza" published a story for teenagers "Varvary". The publishing house "Grani-T" is preparing for publication a story for high school students "Vitrolomy". It is addressed to the readers of the trilogy "Mariyka and Kostyk", who, according to the author, In the time that has passed since the release of the last book in the trilogy, they have grown and will interpret what was written in a new way.
Among the collections of essays, the book "Abandoned and Resurrected" (2021) stands out. It consists of short essays about famous Ukrainian writers, classics of Ukrainian literature of the 19th – 20th centuries. Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Karpenko-Kary, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Olga Kobylyanska, Stepan Rudansky, Maksym Rylsky and many others. The book also contains essays about modern Ukrainian society and several interviews with the author.
Stepan Protsiuk's works have been translated into German, Russian, Slovak, Polish, and Czech. The writer runs a YouTube channel with interesting interpretations of the life and work of Ukrainian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. He holds literary evenings and creative meetings with readers in many cities of Ukraine, as well as in Krakow, Berlin, Olomouc, Paris, Helsinki, Rome, Chicago, and New York.
Awards and honors
Stepan Protsiuk is a laureate of many literary awards. From 1998 to 2003, he received the awards of the magazine "Kur'yer Kryvbasu" 7 times. In 2000, he became a laureate of the "Blagovist" award, and in 2002, a laureate of the Ivan Franko literary award. The publication "Vidkinuti i voskresli" was included in the all-Ukrainian rating "Book of the Year 2021" as one of the best in the "Essays" nomination. In 2003, for the novel "Infection", Stepan Protsiuk was nominated for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. In September 2015, Stepan Protsiuk received the "Golden Writer of Ukraine" award.
Myroslava SOROKA,
humanities teacher
