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Askold Melnyczuk
Portrait of Askold Melnyczuk

Askold Melnyczuk—the founding editor of AGNI, for which he received the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing—is the author of four novels and a book of stories. What Is Told (Faber, 1994), was the first commercially published work of fiction in English to highlight the Ukrainian refugee experience and was named a New York Times Notable. Other novels have been selected as a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and an Editor’s Choice by the American Library Association’s Booklist. His most recent book is a collection of stories, The Man Who Would Not Bow. His selected poems, The Venus of Odesa, is forthcoming from Mad Hat in summer 2025. A book of selected nonfiction, With Madonna in Kyiv: Why Literature Still Matters (More than Ever), will be published by Harvard University Press in 2026. He has edited a book of essays on the St. Lucian Nobel Prize–winning poet Derek Walcott and is coeditor of From Three Worlds, an anthology of Ukrainian writers from the 1980s generation. He's the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award for fiction, the Heldt Prize for translation, and the George Garret Award from AWP for his work in the literary community. Individual poems, stories, essays, and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Also the founder of Arrowsmith Press, he has taught at Boston University, Harvard, and Bennington College and currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston. (updated 5/2025)

AGNI has published the following work:

Essays
Where is My Lariat? The Poetry of John McKernan
AGNI 5/6Print Only
Essays
Reflections at 50
AGNI 96Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: No, Really: What Is To Be Done in Ukraine
AGNI 81Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: Occupational Hazards
AGNI 76Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: Beating Toms
AGNI 74Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: A Proposal for Unknotting Credit Markets and Restoring Prosperity
AGNI 73Print Only
Essays
In Memoriam Michael Mazur, 1935–2009
AGNI 70Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: Secular Antics in Bethlehem
AGNI 68Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: On the Failures of Victory
AGNI 64Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: An Open Letter to My Students About Captain Violin, Saul Bellow, the War, and the Art of Fiction
AGNI 62Print Only
Essays
Shadowboxing: From the Diary of a Self-hating Pundit
AGNI 60Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing: The Future of Literature in America
AGNI 55Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing: Prophet Loss
Essays
In Memoriam: Solomea Pavlychko
AGNI 51Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing: Saved by Shame: Milosz’s Concupiscent Curds
AGNI 49Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing: On Not Being Irish in Boston
AGNI 48Print Only
Editor's Note
Ed Hogan: In Memoriam
Editor's Note
AGNI at Twenty-Five
Editor's Note
Send No Money Now
AGNI 40Print Only
Essays
James Laughlin, Poet
AGNI 37Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing (A Column): Socrates on Ice
AGNI 34Print Only
Editor's Note
Shadowboxing: A Column
Editor's Note
Reply to Birkerts
AGNI 29/30Print Only
Editor's Note
Prefixes to the Self
AGNI 28Print Only
Editor's Note
Editor’s Note
Editor's Note
Introduction
AGNI 26Print Only
Essays
Roman Coins, Scythian Pottery
AGNI 26Print Only
Editor's Note
Introduction to This Issue’s Poetry
AGNI 21Print Only
Poetry
Never the Kind
AGNI 17Print Only
Fiction
The Great Acorn of Light
AGNI 12Print Only
Poetry
One Poem
AGNI 2Print Only

AGNI has published the following translations:

Poetry
Podillia
by Olena Zahajkewycz
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
Poetry
from Prayers: 9, 13, 24
by Bohdan Boychuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Rubchak and Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 33Print Only
Poetry
from Prayers: 1
by Bohdan Boychuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Rubchak and Askold Melnyczuk
Poetry
We Who Have No Future
by Valentyn Vorog
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 16Print Only
Poetry
Spring
by Mykola Rudenko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 14Print Only
Poetry
At Least, You
by Mykola Rudenko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 14Print Only
Poetry
The Flower
by Mykola Rudenko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 14Print Only
Poetry
The King of Tasmania
by Mykola Rudenko
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
Poetry
Owl & Thrush
by Gregory Skovoroda
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 13Print Only
Poetry
Eagle & Magpie
by Gregory Skovoroda
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 13Print Only
Poetry
Dogs
by Gregory Skovoroda
Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
AGNI 13Print Only
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