Eternal Calendar, Eternal Time. A Conversation with Vasyl Makhno

Calendar of Eternity - the latest novel by Vasyl Makhno, a Ukrainian-American poet, prose writer, essayist and translator is a story containing mystical and mythological elements spanning the 17th century and contemporary times, stretching from Istanbul to Galicia. In the book, the author combines three time spaces, creating an unusual historical novel in which the story has a non-linear form, because - as he himself says - we are all anchored in the eternal calendar, our life is such a calendar, regardless of the epoch. Slightly contrary to modernity in its globalized form, Vasyl Makhno's book can be read as a praise for locality and spirituality that springs from it.

Vasyl Makhno is the author of twelve collections of poetry, two essay collections, and a novel. His first book of fiction, the short story collection The House in Baiting Hollow, earned him the 2015 BBC Book of the Year Award (Ukraine). He is the recipient of multiple other literary awards and prizes, both in Ukraine and abroad, including the Morave International Poetry Prize (Serbia), the Order of Merit (Ukraine), and the Kovaliv Fund Award (USA). Vasyl’s work has been translated into twenty-four languages. Individual books of his—sixteen in total—are available in English, German, Polish, Serbian, Hebrew, Russian, and Romanian. In English, Vasyl’s poetry and essays have been published widely in journals such as Agni, Krytyka, Solstice, and Hawaii Review, as well as in anthologies published by Black Lawrence Press and Academic Studies Press. He is a native of the small Western Ukrainian town of Chortkiv and its environs, and has been living in New York City since 2000. An insatiable traveler, Vasyl holds a PhD in Literature from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.