Andrusyak Ivan

Andrusyak Ivan

Poet, children's writer, novelist, literary critic, translator

Born on December 28, 1968, in the village of Verbovets of the Kosiv district in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ivan Andrusiak is a poet, children’s author, prose writer, literary critic, and translator.

At the beginning of the 1990s, he joined the realm of literature as one of the members of the New Degeneration group with Stepan Protsiuk and Ivan Tsyperdiuk. Ivan is acclaimed to be one of the leading poets on the 1990s generation. He designed his own discernible poetic manner based on the use of metaphors ("Andrusiak writes in metaphors which do not exist," T. Devdiuk, Krytyka); this acquired a name of ‘flowing semantics’ (A. Dnistrovyi, Knyzhnyk-review).

Ivan Andrusiak’s prose is characterized as ‘densely’ symbolic and metaphoric with active usage of dialects. Since 2000, he avidly engages in literary criticism (media such as Knyzhnyk-review, Book Review, Courier of the Kryvbas, Kalmius, Berezil, Suchasnist etc.) mostly examining poetry, defending moral principles in literature and distinction between ‘high’ and ‘pop’ literature.

Since 2005, Ivan Andrusiak turns to children’s literature: his poems are published in media, almanacs, and anthologies – later to be included in the book Soft and Fluffy (2010). In 2007, his fairy-tale novel for preschool and primary-school ages Stefa and her Chakalka was published.

Preschool editions also include Animal ABC (2008) and Bunny’s Book (2008), both consisting of poems and poetic tales; a game narrative Who’s Afraid of the Bunnies (2010) was singled out with the first Zolotyi Leleka Children’s Literature Award. Children of primary and secondary school age would take a fancy for cheery adventure stories collection Shrikes, or How Lisa and Stefa Ran Away from Home (2009) and A Wild Boar, Big Tale (published in Barvinok magazine, November 2009 – February 2010); high school teens would be interested in the book of biographic stories Ivan Andrusiak about Dmytro Tuptalo (St. Dymytrii Rostovskyi), Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Taras Shevchenko, Nil Khasevych and Oleksa Dovbush (2008). However, the author himself considers his ‘main’ children’s work to be a small story Uncle Barbatko Laughs (issued in the book Three Days of Fairy Tale, 2008), which in poetic manner narrates to a child of the subtle nature of human relations, of each person’s uniqueness in the world, of love and pain, of a deep connection between a human and nature, of beauty and complexities of life.

Ivan Andrusiak is a member of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Writers Association. Since November 2011, he is a member of PEN Ukraine. He resides in the town of Berezan in the Kyiv region.