Tarnavsky, Ostap

Tarnavsky, Ostap [Тарнавський, Остап; Tarnavs'kyj], b 3 May 1917 in Lviv, d 19 September 1992 in Philadelphia. Writer and community figure; husband of Marta Tarnavska; father of Maxim Tarnawsky. As a postwar refugee he lived in a displaced persons camp in Austria. He moved to the United States of America and settled in Philadelphia, where he served as executive director of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee (ZUADK) and secretary (1960s–1975) and head (after 1975) of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. His first poems appeared in Lviv journals in 1935. He wrote the poetry collections Slova i mriï (Words and Dreams, 1948), Zhyttia (Life, 1952), Mosty (Bridges, 1956), Samotnie derevo (The Solitary Tree, 1960), and Sotnia sonetiv (A Hundred Sonnets, 1984), the literary essay collection Podorozh poza vidome (Voyage beyond the Known, 1965), the essay Tuha za mitom (Longing for Myth, 1966), a history of the ZUADK (1971), and the prose collection Kaminni stupeni (Stone Levels, 1979). His poems, literary articles, literary criticism, translations of Western poetry, and reminiscences appeared in Svoboda, Suchasnist’, Lysty do pryiateliv, Kyïv (Philadelphia), The Ukrainian Quarterly, and Books Abroad. A volume of collected works, Virshi (Poems) was published in 1992.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]