Yuriy Izdryk

In June 2018, he recorded a videoconference in support of the Ukrainian director in prison, Oleg Sentsov.

In 2014, while attending the International Scholarship for Poets, Meridian Czernowitz in Chernivtsi, Izdryk began collaborating on the Summa media project, which involves the constant communication of the authors with the audience. The end product of Summa was to be a book of the same name.

Izdryk's first works appeared in the self-published editions of the magazines Chetver and Breaking (Poland). These included the serial The Last War and the poetic cycle Ten poems about the Motherland. The style of these early works led some critics to believe that Izdryk was a pseudonym of Andrukhovych, as certain stories, characters and phrases are similar – which later came to distinguish the creators of the Stanislav phenomenon. Over time, Izdryk declared himself an extraordinary artist, and plagiarism was dismissed.

Izdryk published his first novel, Wozzeck, in 1998. He followed this with Double Leon in 2000 and AM™ in 2004. He continued to edit Chetver until its publication was suspended in 2008. In 2009, Izdryk published the collections of essays and sketches Flash 2GB and TAKE, for which he received a 2010 Book of the Year award from BBC-Ukraine. In 2011, Izdryk published Underwor(l)d, a collection of poetry and essays. In 2013, he published Izdryk. Yu a collection of poetry originally published in his blog, "Dead Diary".

He wrote the novels The Island of Krk (1994), Wozzeck & Woczkurgia (1996, 1997), Double Leon (2000) and AM™ (2004). He also wrote the poetry collection Stanislav and his 11 Liberators (1996), several collections of essays, and a number of short stories, articles on cultural studies and literary criticisms. Izdryk is also one of the founders of the Stanislav phenomenon, a group of postmodernist post-Soviet writers. He lives and works in his birthplace, Kalush.

In 1994, Izdryk returned to literary endeavours. His short story "Island Krk" [uk] appeared in the mainstream magazine Modernity [uk] in 1994, and was received positively by critics. A Polish translation later appeared in the magazine Literatura na Świecie, and the story was featured in the 1998 collection The Island of Krk and Other Stories.

Visual art briefly interrupted Izdryk's writing. He began to actively engage in painting, and participated in exhibitions between 1990 and 1994. He also engaged the artistic design of books and magazines and conducted personal exhibitions. His drawings were popular and he was able to make a living from them. For a time he was fascinated by theatre and wrote staging for The Cricket on the Hearth and The Catcher in the Rye, which were used by the Chernihiv regional youth theatre in the early 1990s.

In 1989, he began work on the magazine Chetver. The first two editions were self-published. In 1990, at one of the artistic events (during the preparation of the biennial "Impreza" that took place in Ivano-Frankivsk), Izdryk met with Yurii Andrukhovych, which became a decisive factor in his life. He asked Andrukhovych to edit Chetver with him, and for several years the two artists worked on the magazine together.

After graduating in 1984, Izdryk began working as an engineer at a machinery plant in Ivano-Frankivsk. In 1986, he transferred to the Kalush Research Institute of the Khalkaria and worked there until 1990.

At the end of the 1980s, he participated in numerous official and unofficial artistic events and exhibitions and collaborated with the Komsomol oblast newspaper.

Yuriy Romanovych Izdryk (Ukrainian:Юрій Романович Іздрик, born August 16, 1962, Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) is a Ukrainian writer, poet and author of the conceptual magazine project Chetver, also known as Thursday.