Finding Yourself Again: Ukrainian author brings her story of leaving home to Westport
The event, which will be conducted in both Ukrainian and English, offers an early glimpse of Hanna Horodetska's latest book, Going West, about forced migration and the quieter losses that come with it.
Every migrant knows the moment when the familiar world stops being the one you live in. The morning routines, the streets you could walk with your eyes closed and the rhythm of an ordinary day all fall away. What remains is a question that is harder to answer than it sounds: who are you now?
That question sits at the heart of Going West (На захід від міста), the latest book by Ukrainian writer Hanna Horodetska. She will present it at Westport Library on Saturday, 14 November, from 2 to 4 pm, in a bilingual literary talk open to the whole community.
A story of home left behind
Published in Ukrainian by Old Lion Publishing (Видавництво Старого Лева), Going West tells of a home one had to leave, the loneliness of life in a foreign land, and the slow search for oneself in a new reality. It is a book about forced migration, but also about the quieter losses that come with it: the small habits, routines and certainties that make up a life.
Open conversation
The afternoon is designed as an open conversation.
Topics will include forced migration, the loss of a familiar world, and the process of adapting to a new existence. Horodetska and her moderator will explore what it means to live between two realities, and whether it is possible to find yourself again on the other side.
Expect a discussion about human vulnerability, empathy and the search for one’s place in the world. These are themes that will resonate with anyone who has ever left somewhere behind, whether by choice or necessity. The event will be conducted in both Ukrainian and English, so that newcomers and long-time residents of Mayo can share the same room and the same conversation.
The author
Horodetska is a Ukrainian writer, translator and tour guide, and the author of four books: Inclusion, Other Maria, The Lord Doesn’t Like Vegans, and Going West. In Ukraine she worked at the National Reserve Sophia of Kyiv, where she led tours for visitors including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Boris Johnson and the first lady of Turkey, Emine Erdoğan.
She has lived in Ireland since 2025 and works as a social worker for Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. It is a role that brings her daily into contact with the realities of vulnerability and belonging, and one that gives her reflections on displacement a grounded, lived dimension.
Guiding the conversation will be Khrystyna Sodomora, a Ukrainian journalist, editor and book reviewer based in West Mayo. Back home she worked at Kana magazine and at the Svichado and Urbino publishing houses, and she writes the book review blog Zhuki Booki.
Sodomora arrived in Ireland as a refugee in 2022 and has made her home here. In 2025 she founded a Ukrainian book club at Westport Library, creating a regular space for readers to gather around books in their own language. Saturday’s event grows naturally out of that work.
Admission is free, but registration is required. Attendees will also have the chance to buy a Ukrainian-language copy of Going West and have it signed by the author.
When: Saturday, 14 November, 2–4 pm
Where: Westport Library, The Crescent, Westport, Co. Mayo, F28 HE26
Admission: Free, registration required
For anyone who has ever wondered what it takes to rebuild a life in a new place, this promises to be an afternoon worth setting aside.