Mapping the City: Iryna Shuvalova

MAPPING THE CITY – EUROPEAN WRITERS IN LONDON 14th May, 18:00 – 20:00

Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London, SW1P 3EU

For centuries, writers have come to London from across Europe, to live or visit. Their encounters with the city leave a mark: on the writer, on their work and often on London itself. To honour and record their presence, University College London (UCL) has created a unique digital map, Lost and Found: A European Literary Map of London. The map highlights the impact of past writers on the city and invites living writers to contribute and reflect on London as a destination and place where people, languages, literatures and cultures meet and are transformed.

To mark UCL’s 2025 European Literary Map of London Writer in Residence, this special night of stories, insights and global voices features this year’s selected writer, Ireland’s Ciara Broderick, alongside three of the shortlisted writers, Nisrine Mbarki from the Netherlands, Domas Raibys from Lithuania and Iryna Shuvalova from Ukraine. These four writers, for whom sense of place is integral to their writing, will read from their work and discuss their relationship with London as a city of literature and cultural exchange, as well as how they propose to make their own mark on the European Literary Map of London. Which languages and literatures have had the greatest impact on London’s literary life, which are missing and why? How do contemporary writers view their European literary forebears and their influence on London? And does London still have the draw it once had for Europe’s writers?

More information about the event and the project here.

Iryna Shuvalova is a poet, academic and translator from Kyiv, currently based in Oslo. Iryna has given a powerful voice to the experience of war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, focusing on the point of view of the Ukrainians who find themselves lost in exile during this devastating period. As of early 2025, Shuvalova has authored five books of poetry in Ukrainian. Her latest book of poems, titled endsongs (кінечніпісні) and published in 2024, has been described as ‘a future classic’. In 2009, she co-edited the first anthology of queer writing in Ukraine. Her work has been translated into 25 languages and published internationally. She is currently working on her next book, I Don’t Speak This Language (Я не знаю цієї мови), conceived as a joint project with a China-based Ukrainian visual artist Julia Tveritina.