Dzvinka Torokhtushko

She was born on February 2, 1972 in the town of Kremenets, Ternopil Oblast. She went to school there. She learned to read at the age of 3. A year later, she enrolled in the library on her own. Parents divorced when Lyuba was only three months old. Childhood in the company of mother and grandmother was not easy. I grew up in an environment where you had to be able to stand up for yourself. Fights and arguments with boys sometimes led to the police station. From the age of 12, L. Burak began to attend a group of young journalists. The first children's publications brought the first modest royalties, which were very necessary for a family that had very modest fortunes at that time. The first pioneering articles were published in the Kremenets district newspaper "Banner of Victory". Later, publications began to appear in Ternopil, Rivne, Zbarazh, and Shum periodicals.

After school, she tried to enter the Ternopil Pedagogical Institute. The attempt, despite even the certificate of the winner of the Republican Olympiad in the Ukrainian language, turned out to be unsuccessful. Then there was work in a public catering establishment in Kremenets (saleswoman, dishwasher, secretary of the Komsomol organization). However, the Komsomol career did not work out. It was already 1990 in the yard. The time of change and national revival was approaching.

Lyuba met her future husband at the very first environmental rally in Kremenets. It was on it that Stus's poems, rebel songs and the slogan "Glory to Ukraine" were first heard in Kremenets. The man graduated from the seminary in 1994 and was sent to serve in the city of Dniprodzerzhinsk. So the family ended up in the East of Ukraine. In 1999, the family moved to Kamianets-Podilskyi. Since 2008, the family has been living in the city of Ternopil.

Starting from 1991 to 2009, six children were born in the family. Despite this, Lyubov Burak found strength and time for self-education and professional improvement. She started learning Slavic languages (Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian) on her own. She improved her language skills through live communication with Roman Catholic priests and nuns. She began to read the original texts written in different languages, to engage in translation work. It was these skills that allowed her to earn a living in this way for several years.

The entire family of L. Burak took an active part in the events of the Revolution of Dignity, and later in the war in Eastern Ukraine. She actively engaged in volunteer activities and helped our soldiers. L. Burak's husband is a military chaplain of the Maidan, and later of the Right Sector and the 5th Abbot of the UDA. Two older sons of Dzvinka Torokhtushko served in the East of Ukraine.

Dzvinka Torokhtushko is the author and co-author of numerous poetic and prose works, translations, fairy tales, poems for children, short stories, etc.

The most famous of them are:

– poetry collection "I will bloom with wood" (1993);

– poetry collection "Sounds and signs" (1994);

– the fairy tale "Guardian Firefly" (2015);

– book of poems (co-authored) "Time B" (2015);

– book of poems (co-authored) "Voice of Blood" (2015);

– the novel "Masik" (2016);

– the fairy tale "Firefly" (2017);

– collection of short stories "Photographer" (2017);

– a collection of poems for children "Ringing Poems" (2017);

– the fairy tale "Miracle in Lyceum Lane" (2018);

– the fairy tale "Sonechko" (2018);

– a collection of intimate lyrics "#Autumn.nyu" (2018);

– collection of short stories "Pytrovna" (2018);

– poetry collection "Prayer" (2019);

– collection of satirical novels "Rodynne" (2019).

– collection of short stories "Mountain Street" (2021)

– fairy tale "Hedgehog" (2022)