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Serhij Mazurkevitch  [ Ukraine ]

Sergej Mazurkevich was born in 1964 in Donetsk, east Ukraine. He graduated from Donetsk technical college in 1983, and initially worked as a car mechanic. From 1986 to 1990 Mazurkevich studied at Kharkiv Law Institute. He taught yoga for a number of years, and was also the executive editor of a philosophical magazine until 1997. From 1998 he was an editor for a Ukrainian television channel, where he hosted different programs and also co-developed a range of broadcasting formats. It was during this time that he also began to write, publishing a range of self-help books on health and wellness, children’s education, and yoga, and also wrote a number of entries for »Enzyklopedija zablushdenij« (2001/2002; tr. The encyclopedia of errors). He has also researched historical and biographical themes, including the life of Christopher Columbus. He has published 30 books to date.

Mazurkevich traveled to Thailand, India, Cambodia, Nepal and Laos, among other Asian countries, and kept a travel diary of his impressions and experiences, which he published on his homepage. His poems and stories in the style of magic realism, as well as articles on different themes, such as the symbols used by various cultures, and a fascinating collection of popular scientific facts are also on his website. The graphic novel »Dira« (tr. The hole) was published in 2016 by the Kievan publishing company Luta sprawa, which was founded in 2014 at the height of the Ukraine conflict. Mazurkevich wrote the text for artist and illustrator Serhij Zakharov’s graphic novel »Dira«. It describes what Zakharov experienced after he was arrested by a DNR patrol for publicly staging a political art event in his native city of Donetsk in 2014. During his two-month incarceration, Zakharov and the other inmates were taken to DNR torture chambers where they were interrogated, beaten, deprived of sleep, and forced to witness three staged executions. These experiences are visualized realistically in »Dira«, which Mazurkevich’s texts complement. Mazurkevich was also the media spokesperson for Zakharov’s artists’ collective »Murzilki« two years before »Dira« was published. The author lives in Charkiv.

Bibliography

Ключ к долголетию,  1998

Йога для всей семьи, 2000

Энциклопедия заблуждений, 2001/02

Колумб, 2013

Діра,  2016 [Ілюстратор: Сергій Захаров]