Sweet Darusya

Maria Matios is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, and official. She was born in the village of Roztoky in the Bukovina region, and presently resides in Kyiv. She authored twelve volumes of fiction and poetry, including the novel Sweet Darusia, and the collections of stories titled The Short Life and Nation. Her prose works have been translated into Russian, Polish, English, Serbian, and Belorussian. Her first poems were published when she was fifteen years old. In 1992 she published her first prose in Kyiv Magazine. Maria Matios bases her books on the unique experiences of her family, whose roots go back as far as 1790. She was the winner of the Book of the Year 2004 prize and of the Taras Shevchenko National Award in 2005 (for her novel Sweet Darusia). In the 2014 Ukrainian election Matios was re-elected as a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament.

Allyson Voller is a SAG-AFTRA actor based in Chicago. She's worked professionally for many years, in the Midwest theater, on-camera, improv, and voice-over community. Holding a degree in theater, she also studied improv at The Second City Conservatory and iO Chicago. Allyson's path led her to audiobook narration and she's never looked back. Her audiobook narration work has been recognized with finalist nominations in the Independent Audiobook Awards and the Audiobook Adrenaline Awards. When not recording in her booth, you can find her walking her local hiking trails, rescuing a wandering turtle, creating silly memorable shenanigans with her kids or just simply reading a book.

Michael Naydan is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and works primarily in the fields of Ukrainian and Russian literature and literary translation. He has published over fifty articles on literary topics and more than eighty translations in journals and anthologies.

Olha Tytarenko received her BA and MA in English from Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine, her MA from The Pennsylvania State University, and her PhD from University of Toronto with a specialty in Russian literature. She is currently an assistant professor of practice of Russian at the University of Nebraska.