Svitlana Pyrkalo
Svitlana Pyrkalo (born 18 July 1976, in Poltava, Ukrainian SSR) is a London-based writer, journalist and translator who writes in Ukrainian, English and Russian. She graduated from the Kyiv National University, linguistics faculty, and currently lives and works in Whitechapel, East London, United Kingdom. She blogs about life in her borough on pyrkalo.com.
Career and works
Svitlana Pyrkalo is a London-based Ukrainian writer and journalist. She currently works for the EBRD as a press officer. Until April 2011, she was a journalist with the BBC Ukrainian service and presented the Friday interactive evening programme in Ukrainian from London. She is also the originator of the BBC Ukrainian annual book prize.
In 1998, she compiled and published The First Dictionary of Ukrainian Slang (Ukrainian: Перший словник українського молодіжного сленгу) consisting of 2700 entries. It since been used and quoted by other researchers.
In 1999 her first short novel Green Margarita (Ukrainian: Зелена Маргарита) was awarded 2nd place in a Smoloskyp publishers contest for young writers. Subsequently it was published by Smoloskyp in 2000 and has since been republished twice (2002, 2007) by two different publishers.
In 2000 she became editor-in-chief of a TV talk show Without Taboo (Ukrainian: Без табу) at the Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel, dedicated to unusual human stories, with elements of dramatisation.
In 2002, together with colleagues T. Vorozhko and M. Veresen, she published a book describing their TV experience, Without Taboo about "Without Taboo" (Ukrainian: Без табу про "Без Табу") with “Zeleny Pes” publishers.
In 2004 Svitlana Pyrkalo's second novel, Don’t Think About Red (Ukrainian: Не думай про червоне), was published by Fakt publishers, Kyіv.
In 2007 Fakt also published her collection of essays on food, travel and Ukrainian identity Egoist's Kitchen (Ukrainian: Кухня Егоїста). In 2007 Svitlana Pyrkalo also translated into Ukrainian the novel Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka.
From 2007 to 2009 Svitlana Pyrkalo wrote a weekly column in the Ukrainian-language magazine Glavred (Ukrainian: Главред).
In 2006-2010 she wrote a weekly column for the Ukrainian newspaper, Gazeta po-ukrainsky (Ukrainian: Газета по-українськи). In 2007 these collected articles, together with 3 other authors, were published as a book by Nora-druk publishers, Kyіv.