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Jaroslavas Melnikas
Jaroslavas Melnikas
Jaroslavas Melnikas (b. 1959 in Ukraine) is a writer and philosopher. He graduated from Lvov University, Ukraine, Faculty of Philology, and attended a post-graduate course at Maksim Gorki Institute of Literature in Moscow.
Melnikas has written books of prose, critique, and philosophy, which have been published in Lithuania and in European countries. He worked as a magazine writer for Elle. In 1997, the novel Les Parias d’Eden (The Pariahs of Eden) was published by Robert Laffont Publishers in Paris. It received accolades from France’s literary critics and was praised by the country’s press. Critics call him “a Neo-Symbolist of Lithuanian literature”.
His novel Distant Space was shortlisted for Book of the Year 2009. The full text is available in Lithuanian and in Russian. Pasaulio pabaiga (The End of the World), a book of short stories, was shortlisted for Book of the Year 2007, and Labai keistas namas (Very Strange House), a collection of short prose work, was longlisted for Book of the Year 2007.
Among the prizes he has been awarded are the 2008 Literary Prize of Kunchinas for the best short story. Melnikas also won 1st place for the best short story of the year in 2009 (The weekly Literatūra ir Menas – Literature and Art).
He is the member of writer’s unions of Lithuania and the Ukraine, and lives and works in Vilnius.