Askold Melnyczuk

Askold Melnyczuk reads the first part of Termites, segment II that will be in a book of stories coming out next year titled "The Man Who Would Not Bow! Melnyczuk was born in Irvington, New Jersey. He was raised in Roselle Park and Cranford, New Jersey, twenty miles south of New York City. His younger sister, Hanna, is a painter and teacher. His parents, Edward Melnyczuk and Olena Zahajkewycz Melnyczuk were Ukrainian refugees who fled Peremyshl, Poland in 1944, along with his grandfather, the noted scholar, and educator, Bohdan Zahajkewycz. After five years in a refugee camp in Berchtesgaden, Germany, they were finally granted permission to immigrate to the United States. In 1975, the family, who sheltered a number of Jewish friends during the war, were designated "righteous among gentiles" and invited to plant a tree at Yad Vashem in Israel. Melnyczuk graduated from Cranford High School, where a twelfth grade English teacher underscored the single most important lesson for any writer: the art revision. In high school, he won both a national essay contest and a state poetry prize. With friends, he also founded AGNI (magazine), which began as an "underground" newspaper and sold for a penny. While attending Antioch College, from 1972 through 1973, he transformed AGNI into a literary journal. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University in 1976. That same year, he moved to Boston to attend Boston University's celebrated Creative Writing Program. Studying with poet George Starbuck and novelist Rosellen Brown, he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1977. He met his future wife, writer Alexandra Johnson while teaching in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard in 1990. They married in 1995, settling in Medford, Massachusetts. Melnyczuk's most recent novel is Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature. Others include The House of Widows, Ambassador of the Dead, and What is Told. His essays, reviews, poetry, and translations appear in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Glimmer Train, The Antioch Review, The Harvard Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. He received a 3-year fiction fellowship from the Lila Wallace Foundation, as well as numerous NEA grants for his work as editor of AGNI magazine, which he founded in 1972. Melnyczuk received the Magid Award from PEN, and the George Garret Award from AWP for his "service to literature." Founder of Arrowsmith Press, he has edited six books, including three volumes in Graywolf's Take Three Poetry Series, an anthology of Ukrainian writing, a volume on the painter Gerry Bergstein, and essays on Father Daniel Berrigan. He translated Girls, a novella by Oksana Zabuzhko, as well as Eight Notes from a Blue Angel, poems by Marjana Savka. He is proud to revive his AGNI column here with Shadowboxing, Again. Askold Melnyczuk is the Editor-in-Chief of ArrowsmithPress, a major digital magazine highly reputed in New England

Askold Melnyczuk reads segment I of Termites. That will be in a book of stories coming out next year titled The Man Who Would Not Bow! Askold Melnyczuk's most recent novel is Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature. Others include The House of Widows, Ambassador of the Dead, and What is Told. His essays, reviews, poetry, and translations appear in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Glimmer Train, The Antioch Review, The Harvard Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. He received a 3-year fiction fellowship from the Lila Wallace Foundation, as well as numerous NEA grants for his work as editor of AGNI magazine, which he founded in 1972. Melnyczuk received the Magid Award from PEN, and the George Garret Award from AWP for his "service to literature." Founder of Arrowsmith Press, he has edited six books, including three volumes in Graywolf's Take Three Poetry Series, an anthology of Ukrainian writing, a volume on the painter Gerry Bergstein, and essays on Father Daniel Berrigan. He translated Girls, a novella by Oksana Zabuzhko, as well as Eight Notes from a Blue Angel, poems by Marjana Savka. He is proud to revive his AGNI column here with Shadowboxing, Again. Askold Melnyczuk is the Editor-in-Chief of ArrowsmithPress, a major digital magazine highly reputed in New England