Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska

Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska (; , – 1941) was a Ukrainian writer, translator, literary and theater critic and politician. Starytska-Cherniakhivska grew up in an atmosphere of appreciation of the arts and national values.

Starytska-Cherniakhivska was educated at the (Also referred to as the Gymnasium.)

During 1923 to 1924 Starytska-Cherniakhivska was a member of the Aspys literary society.

Arrests In autumn 1929, Starytska-Cherniakhivska's daughter Veronika Chernyakhivska was arrested as part of the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine trial. Starytska-Cherniakhivska and Steshenko were taken to Kharkiv where they were charged with carrying out anti-Soviet activity under Article 54 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1938, as part of the Great Purge, Chernyakhivska was arrested and subsequently executed on 22 September 1938 in Kyiv. There is some parallel between The Living Grave and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet along with Gottfried August Bürger's Lenore. The novel is also a fine representative piece of Ukrainian Romanticism and reminiscent of such earlier Ukrainian Romantic works as Levko Borovykovskyi's ballad Marusia (1829) and Mykola Hohol's (Nikolai Gogol) long tale A Terrible Vengeance (1831–32).

In 2015 Sova Books published its English translation of The Living Grave. One of the interesting facts about the publication is that on its cover the book depicts Daryna, the main heroine of the story and as a little tribute to the author of the story the publisher reproduced her face relying on one of Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska's photographs.

1929 – Diamond Ring ('Diamantovyi persten') was finished by the author six weeks before her first arrest. The manuscript remained unpublished for 64 years, until it appeared in Zona journal in 1993.