2026 - Anna Gruver
Anna Gruver is a Ukrainian writer, poet, essayist and literary translator, living in Kyiv and Kraków. She is a member of PEN Ukraine and was born in Donetsk, where she lived until the age of seventeen. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Anna was living in Kharkiv.
She is the author of the novels Її порожні місця, 2022(“Her Empty Places”), and Нерухомість, 2025(“Real Estate”), both shortlisted by the Ukrainian PEN Center, The best Ukrainian Prose: Chytomo Picks 2025, and Ukrinform.
In 2019, she published the poetry collection За вашим запитом нічого не знайдено (“Nothing was found at your request”). Her poems have been translated into several languages, such as English, French, German, Polish, Czech and Estonian. As an editor, Anna also commented the memoirs of the scientist, religious scholar and prisoner of conscience Ihor Kozlovsky, Вільний у полоні, 2025 ("Free in Captivity").
At the beginning of the full-scale war, Anna was a volunteer at the shelter in Dnipro and at the orphanage that was evacuated from the Kyiv region to Lviv. In 2023, she worked as a project coordinator of the Ukrainian project “The Key of Understanding” and as an assistant at the education department of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland. In 2025, she was among the laureates of the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature award.
Harvard University Press is preparing Ali Kinsella’s translation of Anna’s second novel Real Estate. The original book title in Ukrainian is closer to Immovable Property, hinting at a state of emotional torpor as well. Gruver’s latest novel continues her exploration of memory in difficult historical periods, focusing more intently on the experience of emigration — a topic that has become particularly resonant for Ukrainians in recent years.
This residency at the Passa Porta Studio was made possible by a contribution from Flanders to the UNESCO multi-donor fund ‘Response activities in and for Ukraine’.
Photo: