b. 1995
Yaryna Chornohuz
Poet and Marine
She wrote her poems “on the out-breath after a completed mission,” and they won Ukraine’s top arts prize. Yaryna Chornohuz is a poet and a combat medic in the Marine Corps who signed up in 2020 and has fought in the Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson regions.
Key accomplishments
- Taras Shevchenko National Prize (2024) for her poetry book “[dasein: the defence of presence]”
- Poetry collections “How the War Circle Bends” (2020), “[dasein: the defence of presence]” (2023) and “Night Saffron” (2025)
- Combat medic in the 140th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion of the Marine Corps (call sign “Yara”)
- Medals “For Military Service to Ukraine” and “For a Saved Life”
- The French edition of “dasein” won the Alain Bosquet Prize (Paris, 2026)
Poems between missions
How do you write poetry at the front? Yaryna Chornohuz says: “on the out-breath after a completed mission.” That is how her book “[dasein: the defence of presence]” (2023) came about. In March 2024 it won the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest award for the arts. When the government announced the winners, it described the author simply as a member of the Armed Forces.
Ukrainian from the start
Yaryna was born in 1995 in Kyiv, into a family of bandura players. Her grandfather was the writer Oleh Chornohuz. She spoke Ukrainian from childhood, and in a largely Russian-speaking world she kept being asked, by children and adults alike, “Why do you speak Ukrainian?” She graduated in the humanities from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and joined the protests on the Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity.
From volunteer to Marine
Yaryna first went to Donbas as a volunteer paramedic with the Hospitallers battalion. There she met a soldier, Mykola Sorochuk (“Krasnyi”). In January 2020 he was killed by a sniper. Yaryna organised a three-month protest in Kyiv, “Spring on Granite”, and then signed a military contract. She became a combat medic in the 140th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion of the Marine Corps, call sign “Yara”. When the full-scale invasion began she fought near Sievierodonetsk, and later in the Donetsk and Kherson regions.
Why it matters
Yaryna Chornohuz writes about the war from the inside, as someone who saves the wounded under fire. Her first collection, “How the War Circle Bends” (2020), is dedicated to Mykola Sorochuk. “[dasein]” was translated into French, and in 2026 it won the Alain Bosquet Prize in Paris, carrying a Ukrainian soldier’s voice far beyond the front line.
