Ukrainian poet and literary critic Yuriy Tarnawskyi dies in the USA

Yuriy Tarnawsky, a representative of the Union of Writers of Ukraine, co-founder of the New York Group, poet, translator, and linguist-cyberneticist, has died at the age of 91.

UNN reports this with reference to Yuriy Tarnawsky's social media page.

Details

Yuriy Tarnawsky passed away on October 14, 2025. His wife announced the death of the famous writer, translator, and linguist.

Yuriy Tarnawsky was born in the Lviv region (Turka) in a family of teachers in 1934. It is known that the future writer had to live in a displaced persons camp in Germany, in the city of Neu-Ulm. In the 1940s, Tarnawsky studied at Ukrainian and German gymnasiums, and received his secondary education in Munich. In the early 1950s, he emigrated to the USA. There he settled with his family in New Jersey. In 1956, Tarnawsky graduated from the College of Engineering in Newark, and later worked at IBM, dealing with expert systems.

Yuriy Tarnawsky is known as one of the founders of the New York Group of Ukrainian avant-garde writers. He wrote texts in Ukrainian and English, combining, among other things, experimental poetic forms.

Tarnawsky's first collection of poetry, titled "Life in the City," was published in 1956. In 1961, his first novel, "Paths," was published. From the early to mid-1990s, Tarnawsky was a professor of Ukrainian language and culture at Columbia University.

Recall

In June, Ukrainian poet, dissident, and long-term political prisoner of Soviet camps Ihor Kalynets died at the age of 86. He was convicted in 1972 for his poems and was held in Perm concentration camps along with other famous Ukrainians; he is also a laureate of the Shevchenko Prize.