A frontline poet wins a Gallimard prize: Yaryna Chornohuz takes the Prix Alain Bosquet

What happened

Ukrainian poet and serving soldier Yaryna Chornohuz has won France’s 2026 Prix Alain Bosquet. The award went to her collection “C’est ainsi que nous demeurons libres” (“This Is How We Stay Free”) and, alongside the author, to its translators from Ukrainian, Ella Yevtushenko and Frédéric Martin. The news was announced by Chornohuz on Instagram and by the Ukrainian Institute in France, Ukrinform, Chytomo and Detector Media report.

“My second book of poetry, ‘dasein: defending presence’, published in French translation… has been awarded the Alain Bosquet Prize, which is given by the eminent publishing house Gallimard. It is a prize for the author and the translators,” she wrote.

The book

The French volume translates Chornohuz’s second collection, “[dasein: oborona prysutnosti]” (“dasein: defending presence”), published in Ukrainian by Vikhola in 2023. According to the literary outlet Chytomo, she wrote the poems during rotations at the front, including after Russia’s full-scale invasion began. In 2024 the collection won her the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.

The French translation was published by Le Tripode on September 4, 2025. On September 17, 2026, a week before the prize was presented, it was reissued in the Pocket Poésie paperback series.

Chornohuz says more than 3,700 copies of a 5,000-copy print run sold in France within a year, a strong result for poetry, especially in translation, as Detector Media notes. In 2025 she toured France with the book and says readers discussed individual poems at length during and after the events.

What the jury said

“It was a great honour to receive this award alongside two other poets. The jury said the prize is given for extraordinary, philosophical and bold poetry. It was nice that this is how the writers and editors on the jury see my work,” Chornohuz said.

At the ceremony she and Frédéric Martin, who is also her publisher, read the poem “If you and I stay alive”. That poem, she says, is where the book’s French story began: Martin came up with the idea of publishing the collection after hearing her perform it in Rennes in 2024.

A prize with Odesa roots

The prize was founded in 1999 by Antoine Gallimard in memory of the poet Alain Bosquet, who died in 1998. It is awarded every year at Gallimard to French-language and foreign poets, with translators honoured alongside foreign authors. Bosquet himself had Ukrainian roots: he was born in Odesa in 1919 to the poet and translator Oleksandr Bisk, and his parents emigrated to Europe when he was a year old.

This year’s other laureates are Xavier Bordes, for “Sur le sentier des cinq montagnes”, and Robin Coste Lewis, for “Odyssée de la Vénus noire”.

Who is Yaryna Chornohuz

Chornohuz is the author of three collections, including “Nobody’s Saffron”. She is a marine and combat medic and previously served as a paramedic with the Hospitallers volunteer medical battalion. She is also a volunteer and co-founder of the “Switch to Ukrainian” language project, works as a translator for the Zhorzh publishing house and coordinates the Movomarafon language project.

What next

In late July, Ukrinform recalls, Chornohuz announced that her debut prose book is on the way.