Andriy Meronyk

He was born on October 26, 1993, in the city of Borshchiv, Ternopil Obalst, Ukraine. He studied at secondary school № 2 in Borshchiv, where he developed a deep interest in mathematics, largely thanks to his grandfather Vasyl Meronyk, who was a mathematics teacher. After completing a course paper on "Creating a website generator and its optimization", he moved to live in Kyiv and enrolled in the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" in the direction of "Systems and methods of decision making".[6]

From 2015 to 2018, he began to develop scoring systems. In 2020, he published his first book, "The Golden Grail of Cryptocurrency Trading," a popular science publication about the history of the development of mathematical algorithms by one of the Kyiv firms.[7] In 2021, the book was translated into English for the American market.

In "Publishing House 21" released Meronyk's second book "69 Unsuccessful Dates", which tells about how online dating happens from the male perspective. In one of the interviews, Meronyk noted that he wrote "69 Unsuccessful Dates" not only to share his own stories and failures but also so that people who go on dates could better understand each other's logic and behavior.[8]

In 2022, a book called "Why 69" appeared on the shelves of Ukrainian bookstores, and was officially published under the pseudonym Andriy M. However, the significant similarity of the writing style, as well as a number of other signs, allowed literature critics to conclude that "69 Unsuccessful Dates" and " Why 69" were written by Andriy Meronyk.[9][10][11][12]

On February 24, 2022, he began work on a new book "24.02", which is a war diary. In the book, the author shares how a company of young people suddenly found themselves in the midst of Russian invasion of Ukraine and adapted to new realities to be useful to the country. A distinctive feature of the book is that it contains a separate section with stories of Ukrainian entrepreneurs, doctors, bloggers, artists, including contributions by Pavlo Zibrov, Michelle Andrade, Dasha Astafieva, Tayanna, Zhan Beleniuk, Kateryna Kukhar, Iryna Fedyshyn and others. The book "24.02" represented Ukraine at the international Frankfurt Book Fair in 2022.[13][14] The State Agency of Ukraine for Arts and Art Education included the book "24.02" in the list of contenders for the Oles Honchar Prize in 2023.[15]

A story titled "Symbol of Freedom", dedicated to the formation of national consciousness, was published in the January print issue of the Ukrainian Literary Newspaper in 2023.

In June 2022, he became the ideological inspiration for the artistic action "Street Art Against Dictatorship", which took place in Kyiv during the Russian-Ukrainian war. The main mission of the project was to destroy the image of a large and terrible dictator, as well as to demonstrate to the world that Ukrainians are a brave and free nation, not influenced by the demonic image built over the years. According to Meronyk, the behavior of the neighboring state's leader is a typical illustration of toxicity: contempt, aggressive dominance, and egocentrism bordering on narcissism.[16]

He is the founder of the "School Scholarships Foundation" — an educational charity project aimed at making the learning process more interesting for students. In September 2022, as part of the "Letter to the Defenders" contest, students wrote and drew more than fifty letters to the soldiers of the Ukrainian army.[17][18]

The war diary "24.02" became a charity project aimed at raising funds to assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine and those affected by the war. The book was positioned as one that is not sold but exchanged for a donation (charitable contribution). In total, there were 3 editions of the book, all of which were donated to profiled charitable funds.[19]