Lana Kouchnir

Lana Kouchnir is an award-winning Ukraine-born, Toronto-based emerging writer and performer. Her writings and performances center queer Ukrainian folklore and are driven by a transdisciplinary approach to storytelling. Lana graduated from the 2015-2016 Transdisciplinary Arts Residency at the Watah Theatre; she was a recipient of the Watah Theatre's Outstanding Performance Award for her workshop presentation of Vovk, a monodrama created under the mentorship and dramaturgy of d'bi. young anitafrika. Lana has performed her genre-bending a cappella song-poetry performances for over six years. She was selected as a 2015-2016 City of Ottawa 'Youth in Culture' Youth Advisory Committee member and her hybrid photo-poetry essay was selected for the 2019 Diaspora Dialogues National Short Form Mentorship Program. Lana was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant to write and produce a short lyrical poem video based on her poem, Odesa Caviar. She is currently undergoing a virtual 6-month film production mentorship program with Concordia University Television. Lana was recently awarded a creative project commission to design and facilitate arts programming for the 2021 Drake Arts in Health Program at Mount Sinai Hospital.