User:Eva Borsuk/Joseph (Yosyp) Pavliv

Joseph (Yosyp) Petrovych Pavliv (Ukrainian: Йосип Петрович Павлів, Russian: Иосиф Петрович Павлив) (May 29, 1940 - November 10, 2008) was a Ukrainian novelist and short-story writer.

Biography
Joseph (Yosyp) Pavliv was born on May 29, 1940 in Dobrotvir village (now Kamianka Buzka region, Lviv obslat) to Peter Ivanovich Pavliv and Ustina Pavliv (neé Gural), he was the youngest of seven children. Their firstborn, Ivan, died before the age of one.

In 1962, Pavliv graduated from the Lviv Polytechnic National University and immediately joined a scientific research expedition to Yakutia, where he worked until the late 1960s, becoming a pioneer of Yakutia’s literature. One of his best known short novels, Field Season, was written in Oymyakon, the coldest inhabitant area on Earth, where winter temperatures average -58F (“Полевой Сезон” in Russian, “Борис Черняк та інші” in Ukrainian). It is the only known literary work created there.

In 1977, he graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. From the 1960’s to 1980’s, Pavliv was published by the major literary magazines of the Soviet Union, including the Polar Star and the Far East. During the 1970’s and early 1980’s he wrote for the Komsomolska Pravda newspaper. Pavliv’s work was also published in Ukrainian literary magazines Dnipro and Ukraina.

He lived in Russia for over 20 years, particularly in Yakutia and the Far East in Khabarovsk Krai, which is where he wrote one of his most notable works, Tracking the Sable Cubs. In Tracking the Sable Cubs, Pavliv writes about how unpredictable and unintelligible the human soul is, describing the beauty of nature in the North, and hunting.

Pavliv is the only professional writer who ever worked on the Baikal-Amur Mainline in Russia.

In 1985 he returned to Ukraine, living in Donetsk, Nizhyn and Kyiv.

In 1987, Pavliv was accepted into the USSR’s Union of Writers. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he became a member of the Union of Ukrainian Writers.

In 2004 he moved to New York, but returned to his motherland shortly after.

Joseph Pavliv died suddenly on November 10, 2008 near the Shchaslyve (Happy) village, outside of Kyiv. He is buried at the Baikove Cemetery (plot 33) in Kyiv, Ukriane.

His works are currently being translated into English by Andrew Bromfield.

Joseph Pavliv is the father of journalist Halia Pavliva.

Awards and Honors
In February 2009, his novel Kuzya won the Publishers’ Choice Award of the main literary contest in Ukraine, Coronation of the Word.

Selected Works

 * Tracking the Sable Cubs, 384 pgs., Kyiv, publisher “Soviet Writer”, 1989, first edition:15,000 books sold, editor: A.K. Hryhorenko
 * Flourishing Snow, collection of short stories, 216 pages, Molod (Youth) publishing house, Kyiv, 1985, first edition: 15,000 books sold
 * Ukraine, Dnipro magazine, Field Season, short novel, circulation: 41,800 copies
 * Far East magazine, Khabarovsk, Russia, Clever Cooper, short story, circulation: 57,000 copies
 * Polar Star Yakutia literary magazine, 1972, Glare of the North short novel, circulation: 11,350 copies
 * Ukraine magazine, March 1986, Soviet Author publishing house, circulation: 121,800 copies
 * Coronation of the Word Ukraine’s national literary contest, 2009