Posthumous Prize for Ukrainian Author Killed by Russian Strike
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is delighted by the news that the 2025 winner of Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing is Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary by Victoria Amelina (William Collins/St. Martin’s Press).
The book has been chosen as the best book with a human rights theme published between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025. The prize is awarded posthumously to Ukrainian author Amelina, who was killed before she was able to complete the book.
From the Christopher G. Moore Foundation website:
The 2025 jury – investigative journalist and author Clare Hammond, Director of Human Rights Watch Asia Elaine Pearson and Dr Dainius Pūras, professor of psychiatry and public mental health at Vilnius University – were deeply moved by this unsparing account of the war crimes and the devastating changes war has brought to each person and family throughout Ukraine.
From the Christopher G. Moore Foundation website:
When the war in Ukraine began in 2022, novelist Amelina was working on a new book. Overnight, she became a chronicler of the war and of the courageous women who, like herself, joined the resistance. She travelled the country documenting the effects of war through photographs of ruined homes, schools and community buildings, and recorded testimonies of eyewitnesses and survivors of the atrocities.
Her own death came while on a research trip in Donetsk region, when a Russian cruise missile fell on a restaurant where she and others were having dinner. Her collection of interviews, diary entries, audio files and notes to complete the book was used by friends and colleagues to prepare the unfinished manuscript for publication. The result is an extraordinary account of the horrors of war, the cost of resistance and of women as agents of change. Looking at Women Looking at War is an important document for future justice and future generations.
The Jury commented:
“We were each deeply affected by Looking at Women Looking at War. It is a work of courage, a vivid expression of the turmoil of life and of the wartime role of women whose daily survival is an achievement in itself. Amelina revealed the full experience of war from the inside, while maintaining a positive focus on solutions as part of the story. It is an evocative expression of heart, soul and sacrifice, of people taking power into their own hands, made all the more poignant by the fact that Amelina herself was killed while researching the book.”