Lyuba Yakimchuk

Lyuba Yakimchuk, also known as Lyubov Yakymchuk (; born 1985), is a Ukrainian poet, playwright, and screenwriter, living in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her work includes Apricots of Donbas.

Early life and education Yakimchuk was born and raised in Pervomaisk, Luhansk Oblast, a small coal-mining town near Luhansk in Ukraine's industrial east, from a Ukrainian speaking family.

She graduated from the University of Luhansk and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Yakimchuk's book of poems, Apricots of Donbas, focuses on that time and the conflict in the area. She wrote the script for the film "Slovo" House: Unfinished Novel (2021), about Ukrainian artists living in the Slovo Building, persecuted by the totalitarian system, against the backdrop of the Holodomor.

Yakimchuk lives to the north of Kyiv with her husband, Yuriy Barabash, and their 11-year-old son. However, due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, for the first month her son resided with relatives. Abbey White, for The Hollywood Reporter, highlighted:Legend's performance featured a chorus and a backdrop of images from the crisis in Ukraine, as well as a segment from Lyuba Yakimchuk [...]. In a take on The Lord's Prayer, Yakimchuk described "parents whose house is in the line of fire and who won’t abandon it like a tomb," and said of our daily bread, "give to the hungry." "And forgive us our destroyed cities even though we do not forgive for them our enemies," she continued. "Shoot and protect my husband, my parents, my child and my motherland."

In English-language poetry anthologies The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets: An Anthology. Glagoslav, 2018. Edited and translated from the Ukrainian by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. . The White Chalk of Days: The Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology. Academic Studies, 2018. Edited by Marko Andryczyk. . Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Boston: Academic Studies, 2017. Co-edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky.

In other publications Ukraine: Stop Tanks with Books. Nazraeli, 2022. Photographs by Mark Neville with short stories by Yakimchuk. Edited by David Campany. .