Kateryna Derysheva

Ekaterina Derysheva is a displaced poet from Kharkiv, who was born in 1994 in Melitopol, Ukraine. Since January 2024, Derysheva has been living in Philadelphia, where she is currently an Artist Protection Fund Fellow, poet-in-residence, and at-risk scholar, hosted by the Department of Russian and East European Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Derysheva is concurrently the 2024-2025 Writer-in-Residence at Public Trust.

Derysheva’s poems have been published in journals such as Circulo de Poesia, Plume, Zerkalo, Tlen Literacki, Literaturportal Bayern, Wizie, Volga, and others. She is the author of the books Точка отсчета (“Starting Point”; 2018) and инсталляции не будет (“There Will Be No Installation”; 2023), and the co-author of the book Insulua Timpului (“Earth Time”; Romania, 2020). Her work is also featured in the anthology In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Carolyn Forché (Arrowsmith Press, 2023).

An initiative of Institute of International Education, the Artist Protection Fund (IIE-APF) fills a critical unmet need by protecting threatened artists and placing them at welcoming host institutions in safe countries where they can continue their work and plan for their futures. IIE-APF places these artists in safe havens for a full year and provides fellowship funding, mentoring, and inclusion in a comprehensive network of artistic and social support.