Lisa Weeda

writer/director

Hi! I am Lisa Weeda, a Dutch-Ukrainian writer, literary programmer, playwright and (virtual reality) director. Text is always the core of my work, but I choose to work in different types of media. Ukraine, central and eastern Europe, (distance to) war, magical realism and politics are central themes in my work.

I wrote and co-directed the roomscale VR installation ROZSYPNE, a story about an elderly woman living in the Donbas, during the beginning of the 2014 war. In the 14-minute story you follow her life in the first spring of violence, up until the point where the nose of the MH17-plane crashes into the Ukrainian fields. A forgotten war, world news and a personal story clash.

ROZSYPNE was nominated for an award in the IDFA DOClab competition for Immersive Non-Fiction during IDFA 2019 and for an Alternate realities award at Sheffield DocFest in 2022.

At the end of 2021, I published my debutnovel ALEKSANDRA, spanning a 100 years of my family history. The book travels to Ukraine, the war in the Donbas, the history of the Don-Cossacks, the Holodomor, the Second World War and the deportation of my grandmother Aleksandra as a forced Ostarbeiterin to Germany, brutalistic architecture and much more.

After the publication of ALEKSANDRA I was named literary talent of the year 2022 by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and my novel was shortlisted for the Boekhandelsprijs and the Libris Literature Prize 2022. ALEKSANDRA became Scheltema Book of the Year. In December 2022, I received the Bronze Owl for the best debut. The translation rights of ALEKSANDRA have so far been sold to eight countries, including Germany, Poland and France.

ALEKSANDRA received raving reviews
The Netherlands: “stunning debut” (NRC)
“With her beautiful debut novel ALEKSANDRA, Lisa Weeda wrote the charged history of a Ukrainian family: a story that has gained extra urgency because of the war.” (TROUW)
Germany “Lisa Weeda demonstrates what literature can achieve. No other historical documentary can achieve the kind of condensation the author achieves with the help of this fantastical element.” (TAZ)
"Lisa Weeda's autobiographical family novel resembles a mirror maze that reflects the seemingly hopeless, revolving history of Ukraine. Breathlessly, we follow Lisa to the uncertain outcome." (Büchermagazin)
Poland “Above all, it is a family saga of the Don Cossacks showing the importance of the strength of bonds and pride in one's heritage. Read it if you want to understand the war going on in eastern Ukraine. Read it if you are close to sensitive prose that will touch not only your intellect but also your heart.”
Chzech republic “Lisa Weeda has succeeded in portraying the curse of “grandmother’s native lump”, consisting in a constant stay in the intermediate space, as symbolized by the palace as a non-place between dream and reality, life and death: the fate of people who are constantly either on the run from something, in exile, in emigration, or returning from somewhere.” (ILiteratura)
and Norway “Aleksandra” is a drastic and original history lesson that I will not soon forget.” (NRK)

In december 2023 I performed the work PEACE, together with the classical non-conventional collective Pynarello. In this show, I tell the story of my great aunt Klawa, who returned to Odesa after she fled the invasion in March 2022. In between the text, the musicians of pynarello played classical pieces by heart. We toured 7 sold-out theatres like Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam and Tivoli in Utrecht. In a ****-review, NRC praised the literary droste-effect of PEACE and wrote: “The evocative memories bring Aunt Klawa into sharp focus. You can already see her sitting, with her hard thigh-slapper laugh, in her apartment in Odesa, opposite the military barracks where the lead manhole covers are always stolen. Weeda plays with the vague boundary between reality and fiction in her detailed imagery.”

In February 2024, DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION was published. VPRO magazine wrote about my second novel, that questions war, death, dancing, the power of imagination and complicity: “Lisa Weeda's new novel is a beacon of hope, but also a warning.” The book was also successfully published in Germany in March 2024.

The immersive installation of the same name DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION (collab with interdisciplinary arts company BrotherTill) premiered in May 2024 at Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam and will tour various theatres and festivals in 2024 and 2025. The immersive installation DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION received a *****-review in De Volkskrant, a raving review in De Theaterkrant and was nominated for a Golden Calf in the category Best Digital Culture '24 at the Netherlands Film Festival.

In 2025 I published the essay THE JILLES ARCHIVE, a letter to my grandfather, who was a marine, a World War 2 hero, complicit during his service in the former Dutch Indies, and a very private man. I ask my grandfather this: must we hide a private past or speak up, thus supplementing the collective (queer) (war)memory.

Later this year I will perform the text GHOST/GEISTER/GEESTEN/духі for HIIIT Den Haag in Augsburg. I am currently working on a children's book on the wonders of Ukraine for Blauw Gras publishers, the theatre text WHEAT/ZERNO for PEERgroup and my third novel, with the working title: THE GAS COIN.