Portrait of Askold Melnyczuk

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:

Where is My Lariat? The Poetry of John McKernan

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Reflections at 50

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: No, Really: What Is To Be Done in Ukraine

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: Occupational Hazards

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: Beating Toms

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: A Proposal for Unknotting Credit Markets and Restoring Prosperity

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

In Memoriam Michael Mazur, 1935–2009

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: Secular Antics in Bethlehem

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: On the Failures of Victory

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: An Open Letter to My Students About Captain Violin, Saul Bellow, the War, and the Art of Fiction

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: From the Diary of a Self-hating Pundit

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: The Future of Literature in America

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

In Memoriam: Solomea Pavlychko

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: Saved by Shame: Milosz’s Concupiscent Curds

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing: On Not Being Irish in Boston

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Send No Money Now

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

James Laughlin, Poet

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Shadowboxing (A Column): Socrates on Ice

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Reply to Birkerts

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Prefixes to the Self

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Introduction

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Roman Coins, Scythian Pottery

Essay by Askold Melnyczuk

Introduction to This Issue’s Poetry

Editor’s Note by Askold Melnyczuk

Never the Kind

Poetry by Askold Melnyczuk

The Great Acorn of Light

Fiction by Askold Melnyczuk

One Poem

Poetry by Askold Melnyczuk

AGNI has published the following translations:

Podillia

Poetry by Olena Zahajkewycz Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

from Prayers: 9, 13, 24

Poetry by Bohdan Boychuk Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Rubchak and Askold Melnyczuk

from Prayers: 1

Poetry by Bohdan Boychuk Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Rubchak and Askold Melnyczuk

We Who Have No Future

Poetry by Valentyn Vorog Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

Spring

Poetry by Mykola Rudenko Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

At Least, You

Poetry by Mykola Rudenko Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

The Flower

Poetry by Mykola Rudenko Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

The King of Tasmania

Poetry by Mykola Rudenko Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

Owl & Thrush

Poetry by Gregory Skovoroda Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

Eagle & Magpie

Poetry by Gregory Skovoroda Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk

Dogs

Poetry by Gregory Skovoroda Translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
Back to top