Oleh Hotko

Oleh Hotko

I was born back in the last century in Sourenzh — an ancient place, so they say — whose name has since slid down to the plain «Rivne». Perhaps that is why, after school, I set off for Lviv, where I had the dubious pleasure of studying at a railway transport college. Diploma in hand, I was packed off to the Soviet army, and carried away from it a firm dislike of everything issued by the state and, all the more, of everything Soviet. And since I served my time in Sevastopol, the sea grew tiresome too — though with the years, as they say, it has eased off a little.

In 1993 I published my first collection of novellas and short stories, «Incubator»; over the years my work has appeared in various Ukrainian and Russian anthologies («Rovno Bayunnoye», 2005; the magazines «VIP» and «Gorod s Iznanki», 2011, and others). I worked as a journalist for the local press; today I am a freelancer.

In 2011 I won the All-Ukrainian Young Cinema Festival with the screenplay for the short film «Anfilada». And in 2025 — the ceremony had been held back three years by the war — I received a «Koronatsiya Slova» diploma for the feature screenplay «Woodpeckers of Fate».