Kovach, Fedir

Kovach, Fedir [Ковач, Федір; Kovač], b 7 March 1931 in Humenský Rokytov in the Prešov region of eastern Slovakia, d 12 July 2009 in Prešov. Literary scholar and community figure. A graduate of Kyiv University (1958), he worked in the Ukrainian department of the Slovak Pedagogical Publishing House. He taught Ukrainian literature at Prešov University from 1969 and headed the Cultural Association of Ukrainian Workers in Czechoslovakia from 1979. From 1972 to 1986 he was the editor in chief of the journal Duklia. He was also a deputy in the Slovak National Council. He wrote many articles on Ukrainian literature in the Prešov region, two books about the 19th-century Transcarpathian poet Oleksander Pavlovych (1969 and [in Russian] 1970), and the collection of literary criticism Slovo pro poeziiu ta poetiv (A Word about Poetry and Poets, 1978). He also translated Ukrainian works into Czech and Slovak and edited several books and anthologies.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]