On March 28 it is celebrated the 100th anniversary of Vera Poltoran (1919–1989), a writer, publicist, and honored worker of culture of Belarus.
This figure of the national culture of the second half of the 20th century, a talented writer, a born editor V. Poltoran gave all her strength, a big and sincere soul to Belarusian literature. Her works are not often appeared on newspaper and magazine pages, but were always bright and original.
She is born in the village of Babunichi, Petrikovsky district, Gomel region. She graduated from the village ten-year school, than studied at the M. Gorky Pedagogical Institute in Minsk, but the war interrupted her studies. During the evacuation she worked at one of the rear factories. In 1943, she entered the Faculty of Philology of the Belarusian State University, after which she worked as a style editor in the newspapers “Chirvonaya Zmena” and “Litaratura I Mastaztva”. Since 1953 she has worked twenty years as the editor of the review department in the “Maladost” magazine. Excellent knowledge of the native language, high culture of the word, his deep feeling contributed to her work. Since 1973 and almost to the last days of her life, V. Poltoran headed the review and literary studies department of the publishing house "Mastatskaya Litaratura". It’s difficult to count the books that appeared due to the direct participation of this talented woman. Thanks to her efforts many works of not only seasoned writers, but also emerging authors came out.
Her literary work began in 1949 and she has been constantly published since 1957. The creative interests of the writer were divided between criticism and journalism. In the articles on the works of Belarusian authors she created excellent portraits of her characters and defined the creative and human peculiarities of each of them at a high artistic level.
Journalism was especially close to the writer. Her essays were highly rated by critics and public. During lifetime of V. Poltoran, only two books were released (1967, 1974). After her death the collection in which she included herself almost all of her best from what was published earlier, and the unpublished during her lifetime story, was released in 1989.
For her book and essay V. Poltoran was awarded the State Prize of Belarus named after P.N. Lepeshinsky in 1970 and then she received the title of Honored Worker of Culture of Belarus in 1979.
More detailed information about the life and work of the writer can be found in the “Belarus in Persons and Events” factual database, bibliographic information in the E-Catalog. You can learn about other anniversaries of Belarusian history and culture in the “Belarusian Calendar, 2019”, as well as in the resource “Belarus in the Information Space”.
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