Lena Lagushonkova

Born in Stanica Luhanska/Ukraine in 1984.

Lena Lagushonkova is a dramatist, screenwriter, and writer. In 2000, she graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv/Ukraine with a degree in history.

She began writing plays and drawing in 2018, and wrote her first novel in 2023. She was a curator of the Love and Beaver Drama Festival and co-creator of the Playwrights’ Theater, Kyiv. Her plays have been shortlisted several times during different festivals in Ukraine, including the Current Play Week and the Topical Play Week.

Before the outbreak of war, she worked as a playwright for the V. Vasylko Odessa Ukrainian Theater. Her play Gorky’s Mother made it to the finals of the first edition of the Aurora playwriting competition organized by the Theater in Bydgoszcz (Poland).

She was awarded the European New Talent Drama Prize 2022 (Stuttgart/Germany). Lagushonkova’s plays are performed in theaters in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Georgia, and Norway.

She is currently working on a television script about the 1960s Ukrainian muralist Alla Gorskaya.