Oles Ilchenko is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, children’s author, cultural critic, and screenwriter. He was born in Kyiv on October 4, 1957, and has lived there for most of his life. In recent years he has resided in Switzerland with his wife. He holds degrees from the Drahomanov National Pedagogical University in Kyiv and the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.

His bibliography spans multiple genres. He has written twenty-two books for children, as well as the novels City with Chimeras (2009) and My Beloved Kyara (2011). His memoir Collectors of the Mists: Subjective Notes from a Life in Kyiv (2017) covers the city from the 1970s through the 1990s.

As a poet, Ilchenko has published seven collections: A Wintry Garden (1991), Constellation AS (1993), A Different Landscape (1997), Pages (2004), Cities and Islands (2004), Conversation before Silence (2005), and Certain Dreams, or A Kyiv which is Not (2007). An English-language selection, Conversations before Silence: The Selected Poetry of Oles Ilchenko, was published by Glagoslav Publications in 2017.

He has also written screenplays and cultural criticism. Outside his writing work, his interests include travel, swimming, and cooking.