Nevytska, Iryna

Nevytska, Iryna [Невицька, Ірина; Nevyc'ka; née Buryk], b 10 December 1886 in Zbudská Belá, Zemplén komitat, d 21 November 1965 in Prešov, Czechoslovakia. Ukrainophile writer and community figure in interwar Transcarpathia. Her first poems, stories, and articles appeared under the pen names Anna Novak and Anna Horniak in Transcarpathian periodicals in 1905. In 1918, together with her husband, Omelian Nevytsky, she organized the Ruthenian People's Council in L’ubovňa. In the years between the two world wars she was the only writer in Ukrainian in the Prešov region. In 1922 she founded the Union of Ruthenian Women of the Prešov Region. In 1929 she moved to Uzhhorod, where she headed the women’s section of the Prosvita society, chaired the organizing committee of the First Congress of Ukrainian Women in Transcarpathia (1934), and was a leading member of the Society of Ukrainian Writers and Journalists. She edited the biweekly Slovo naroda (Prešov 1931–2), the first periodical in the Prešov region published in modern literary Ukrainian. In 1936 she became leader of the new nationalist Ukrainian Peasants’ and Workers’ Party of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and editor of its biweekly organ Narodnia syla (Uzhhorod 1936–8). In 1939 she was an active member of the Ukrainian National Alliance (Transcarpathia) in Khust. After the Hungarian occupation of Transcarpathia in 1939, she moved to Prešov and thereafter was inactive. Among her works are the first Transcarpathian Ukrainian novel, Pravda pobidyla (The Truth Triumphed, 1924), the story collection Darunok (The Gift, 1929), several plays, and stories and poetry for children. A posthumous edition of her novelette Matii Kukolka was published in Prešov in 1968.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]