Yuriy Tarnawsky was born in Ukraine but was raised and educated in the West. An engineer and linguist by training, he has worked as computer scientist specializing in natural language processing for IBM Corporation and as Professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture at ColumbiaUniversity.
He is a cofounder of the avant-garde group of Ukrainian émigré authors The New York Group and of the collaborative of innovative US writers Fiction Collective/FC2. For his contribution to Ukrainian literature in 2008 he was awarded Order of Merit of Prince Yaroslav the Wise by Ukrainian Government. He resides in the vicinity of New York City and writes in Ukrainian and English.
Yuriy Tarnawsky has authored more then two dozen books of poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. His Ukrainian language books include two volumes of collected poetry Poems about Nothing and other Poems on the same Subject, and They Don’t Exist, collected plays, 6×0, selected prose I Don’t Know, and selected essays Flowers for the Patient. Among his English language books are Meningitis, Three Blondes and Death, Like Blood in Water, and Short Tails. Forthcoming in 2013 are collections of mininovels The Placebo Effect Trilogy (JEF Books) and a book of poetry Modus Tollens (Jaded Ibis Press).
He contributes to the poetry blog October Babies
