Natalia Zabila

Natalia Lvivna Zabila (6 February 1985) was a Ukrainian poet, novelist, and playwright.

Early life and education Natalia Zabila was born in 1903 in St. Petersburg into a noble family descending from the Cossack starshyna of Left-bank Ukraine. Her father was the son of the academician-sculptor Parmen Zabila and a relative of the Ukrainian poet and friend of Taras Shevchenko, Viktor Zabila. Her father's maternal aunt was the wife of the artist Nikolai Ge. Zabila's parents studied at the Stieglitz Art School.

There were seven children in the family: four girls and three boys. All of them were brought up in an atmosphere of admiration for fiction, music, and painting. Zabila was taught to draw, compose poems, and create fairy tales from childhood. She read a lot, in particular the works of Taras Shevchenko, and practiced writing poems as a child.

In 1917, Zabila's family moved to Ukraine and settled in the small village of Liubotyn (now Kharkiv region). In her student years, Zabila wrote prose and poetry for children. In 1924, her husband Sava Bozhko printed her first poem in the newspaper Chervony Kordon in Kamianets-Podilskyi.

Career After graduating from the institute, Zabila worked in the editorial office of the magazine New Book in the Ukrainian Book Chamber.

In 1926, the first book of Zabila's poems, The Far Land, was published. In 1927, the first book for children with short stories Za Volya and The Tale of the Red Beast followed. Having published the poetic story for children About a Little Monkey in 1928, Zabila firmly set out to create children's literature. Although she publishes books for adult readers, works for children become her vocation.

In 1930, Zabila switched to creative work, already having a dozen books, albeit mostly small ones. More than half of those poetry and prose collections are addressed to young readers: Adventures on a Bus (1928), "At Sea" (1929), About Tarasyk and Marysya (1930), Yasochchyna's Book (1934). During her literary career, Zabila has published about two hundred books for children, primarily for preschool and junior school. The collections "Under the Bright Sun" (1949), "Happy Children" (1959), "To the Wide World" (1960), "Stories, Fairy Tales, and Tales" (1962), "Stood a Hut" (1974), "Native Kyiv" (1977, 1982), as well as "Selected Works" in four volumes (1984) were very popular among young readers.

Personal life Natalia Zabila was married three times. She met her first husband Sava Bozhko in 1923 and in 1924 their son Taras was born. In 1972, these works were awarded the Lesya Ukrainka Literary Prize (she became the first laureate of this prize). In 2013, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a draft law commemorating the 110th anniversary of Zabila's birth by establishing a state prize for works for children. One of the streets in the city of Lubotyn, Kharkiv region, is named after her. In 2021, a street in Kyiv that was previously named by the Georgian Bolshevik Oleksandr Tsulukidze was renamed in her honor.