Yuriy Tarnawsky has authored some three dozen books of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and translations in Ukrainian and English, including the novels Meningitis, and Three Blondes and Death, the collections of short fictions Short Tails and Crocodile Smiles, The Placebo Effect Trilogy collection of interrelated mininovels Like Blood in Water, The Future of Giraffes, and View of Delft, the novels Warm Arctic Nights and The Iguanas of Heat, the play Not Medea, a volume of Heuristic poetry Modus Tollens, and the book of essays Claim to Oblivion. He was born in Ukraine, but was raised and educated in the West. An engineer and linguist by training, he has worked as a computer scientist, specializing in Artificial Intelligence, at IBM Corporation and as a professor of Ukrainian literature and culture at Columbia University. For his contribution to Ukrainian literature, in 2008, he was awarded the Prince Yaroslav the Wise Order of Merit by Ukrainian government. He resides with his wife Karina in the New York City metropolitan area.
Literary Diary contains a detailed account of the writing of Yuriy Tarnawsky’s The First-Person Dilogy—Sebastian in a Dream and The Burial of the Count of Orgaz,—the trials and tribulations the aut...
