©Violeta Savchits
Hanna Komar
Hanna Komar is an award-winning poet, translator and activist from Belarus, member of PEN Belarus and Belarusian Writers Union, and an honourary member of English PEN. She has published three poetry collections, Страх вышыні [Fear of Heights] in Belarusian, a bilingual collection Recycled and a collection of docu-poetry Мы вернемся [We’ll Return]. Hanna’s poetic work lays bare the experience of being a girl, then a young woman, growing up in a strongly patriarchal country. Hanna has been participating in the Belarusian protest movement since 2020 and has written about it extensively.
Books by Hanna Komar
Interviews with Hanna Komar
Five of the Best Works of Belarusian Literature, recommended by Hanna Komar
Writers have been subject to persecution and repression in Belarus, and increasingly so in the aftermath of the protests that swept the nation in 2020 and 2021. Owning or distributing books deemed ‘extremist’ by the Lukashenko government can be enough to land you in jail. Here, the poet and activist Hanna Komar selects five of the best works of Belarusian literature that offer a glimpse of the culture and mindset of this post-Soviet nation, and the bravery of those who continue to fight for political freedom.
