OLENA ASTASEVA

Olena Astaseva was born in the city of Kherson, which she considers her hometown to this day, although she currently is in exile outside of Ukraine. She studied at the Kyiv Institute of Culture. She has worked as a librarian, a bookseller, and a copywriter, and she taught courses in playwriting in Kherson. She is the author of stories and a number of plays that were repeatedly shortlisted for the Ukrainian Contemporary Play Week festival and were staged in the theaters of Kherson and Kyiv. Her short play A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War has been presented, read, performed, and filmed in a dozen countries since it was written in March 2022.