Great River Review Reading

Hear from the literary magazine's 2025 prize winners Janice N. Harrington and Askold Melnyczuk
Two B & W author photos side by side: person with brown skin and short curly hair holding chin in hands; person with white hair, glasses, and light skin, holding trumpet
Janice Harrington (left) and Askold Melnyczuk
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Help celebrate the 2025 winners of Great River Review's writing prizes with this online reading! The Creative Writing Program's Walter Nathan Literary Initiatives presents Pink Poetry Prize winner Janice N. Harrington and Walter Nathan Essay Award winner Askold Melnyczuk. Great River Review issue 72 will feature seven poems by Harrington, as well as Melnyczuk's essay "The Art of Poetry," about his mother's life as a Ukranian refugee.

This is an online only event, free and open to the public. Register here. For accessibility questions, email [email protected]

Janice N. Harrington’s latest book of poetry is Yard Show (BOA Editions, Fall 2024). She is the author of three other books of poetry, including Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin (BOA Editions 2016). Harrington is also a children’s author. She teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Askold Melnyczuk has published four novels and a book of stories. What Is Told (Faber, 1994), was the first commercially published work of fiction in English to highlight the Ukrainian refugee experience and was named a New York Times Notable Book. Other novels have been selected an LA Times Best Books of the Year and an Editor’s Choice by the American Library Association’s Booklist. His most recent book is a collection of stories, The Man Who Would Not Bow. His selected poems, The Venus of Odesa, will be published by Mad Hat this April. Harvard's Ukrainian Research Center will publish his book of essays and reviews, With Madonna in Kyiv: Why Literature Matters More than Ever in 2026. He's the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Three Year Award in Fiction, and the George Garret Award from AWP for his work in the literary community. Founding editor of Agni, for which he received the PEN-Magid Award for Editing, and Arrowsmith Press, he has taught at Boston University, Harvard, Bennington College and currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Presented by the Department of English.

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