Biss, Yeva

Biss, Yeva [Бісс, Єва], b 18 June 1921 in Jarabina, Prešov region, Slovakia, d 28 July 2005 in Svydnyk, Prešov region. A Ukrainian painter, playwright, and writer in Czechoslovakia; the wife of Orest Zilynsky. At first Biss wrote in Russian, but from the 1950s all her work was in Ukrainian. She began as a dramatist, writing Druzia i vragi (Friends and Foes, 1951), Barlih (The Den, 1954), Nastala vesna (Spring Arrived, 1959), Bilyi vovk (White Wolf, 1962), and Ester (1965). She is the author of two collections of short stories, Sto sim modnykh zachisok (One Hundred Seven Modern Hairdos, 1967), which attracted wide attention, and Apartament z viknom na holovnu vulytsiu (Apartment with a Window Facing the Main Street, 1969). Political circumstances in Czechoslovakia after 1969 did not allow her work to be published. Only after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 another collection of her stories Shynok pid lelechym hnizdom (Inn Under the Sign of the Cuckoo’s Nest) was published in Bratislava in 1993. Another collection of her stories Vtecha vid Minotavra (An Escape from the Minotaur) was published posthumously in Kyiv by Bohdan Boychuk in 2007. Biss painted mostly landscapes and portraits.

[This article was updated in 2014.]