Yurii Matsarskyi was born in 1980 in Kharkiv into a family of doctors. His father was serving as a surgeon in the occupying Soviet army in Afghanistan when he was born, so it was almost five years later when they finally first met. From his childhood he remembers the constant lines for bread and milk, and how his classmates would take turns chewing gum, which was an incredible rarity in the Soviet Union. Even after the gum had lost all its flavor, it could still be chewed by 10 to 15 people. He began working as a journalist at the age of 18, spending extended periods in the Middle East, and covering events in Central Asia. He was in Japan during the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster; worked in Cairo during both Egyptian revolutions; observed the civil war in Syria; and witnessed the battle against ISIS in Iraq. Ahmed, the Prophet Elijah, and I was included in the longlist of the July Honey competition and was a selected participant of the Festival of First Plays in Kyiv, both in 2025. He is also the author of the monologue, Cadillac Eldorado. On February 25, 2022, the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and has received awards from his command and from the President of Ukraine. His only dream today is to witness the total collapse of Russia while reading The Complete Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings which he bought for his 44th birthday in 2024 with plans to read it as soon as the war ends.