AustLit

Vasyl Sokil was one of five children born to a village schoolmaster near Yekaterinoslav, in the Ukraine. After graduating from Kharkov University, he worked as a journalist, teacher and in the theatre. He was conscripted into the Soviet Army in 1944, but did not serve at the front. After demobilisation he worked for a further period as a journalist in Kharkov, and after this supported his wife and son mainly by work in Kharkov theatres. His father died in a labour camp under the Stalin regime, and two of Sokil's siblings left their homeland and settled in the USA after World War II. In 1979 Sokil emigrated to the United States where his fiction and plays were first published. In 1987 he moved to Sydney, Australia. His novella, A Night So Long, published in the original Ukrainian, won the Ivan Franko Prize for Literature in 1986. He has also written about folk music.