Kobzar Literary Award 2012 Short-List of Nominations

By Oksana Zakydalsky

Toronto – The $25,000 biennial Kobzar Literary Award recognizes outstanding contributions to Canadian literature through an author’s presentation of a Ukrainian Canadian theme with literary merit. The inaugural Award Ceremony was held in 2006, and the fourth Kobzar Literary Award 2012 Ceremony will be held on March 1, 2012 in Toronto. There are five finalists for this year’s Award: two novels, a memoir, an academic work, and one book of poetry.

“Under the Unbroken Sky” by Shandi Mitchell depicts the tale of family, survival, love and betrayal. It begins in 1938 when Teodor Mykolayenko returns to his family and farm in Manitoba after a year in prison and, using the strength of will that enabled him to survive starvation, warfare and Stalin’s crimes in Ukraine, he makes the crops grow, and the family begins to heal. But when a returning brother-in-law threatens to take away everything they have built, they have to face a family betrayal. Giller Award winner Joseph Boyden called the novel “brilliant and honest and brutal,” while a New York Times review called it “dazzling.”

Shandi Mitchell is a filmmaker and screenwriter whose award-winning short films have been featured at festivals across North America. She lives in Nova Scotia and “Under the Unbroken Sky” is her first novel.

The narrative of Rhea Tregebov’s “The Knife Sharpener’s Bell” begins in 1935 and is also centered on the trials faced by an immigrant family – but this time a Ukrainian Jewish family living in Winnipeg. To escape from their disappointments in Winnipeg during The Depression, the family returns to Odessa with hopes of experiencing an ideal communist life. But they have come to Stalinist USSR, where terror reigns and the country is soon plunged into the horrors of World War II.

Rhea Tregebov is an award-winning poet and author of books for children. Born in 1953 in Saskatoon, she grew up in Winnipeg and teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

Myrna Kostash is well known to Canadians as a writer of “creative non-fiction”. Since the publication of “All of Baba’s Children” in 1977, she has written on the Ukrainian-Canadian experience several times. In her book “The Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium”, Ms. Kostash shares her experiences in confronting her childhood religion of Eastern Orthodoxy, its roots in Byzantium, and its renderings into Slavic and Greek versions. Ms. Kostash’s journey, through Greece and the Balkans, centers on the variety of images and stories of the Great Saint of the East, St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. Conscientiously researched, the book is a personal journey that examines the shifting parameters of ethnic, national and religious identity.

Active in the Canadian literary community, Ms. Kostash was a founding member of the Periodical Writers’ Association of Canada, and served as chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada (1993-94). Myrna Kostash was born in 1944 in Edmonton where she now lives.

Although it has been described as “impressive” and “scholarly”, Myroslav Shkandrij’s book “Jews in Ukrainian Literature: Representation and Identity” has also been called “accessible to lay readers”, which is what most non-academic readers want to hear. In the book, the relationship between Jews and Ukrainians emerges through an analysis of literary works that enables understanding of diversity in Ukraine and explains interpretations of Ukrainian identity in Canada. Prof. Shkandrij challenges the established view that the Ukrainian and Jewish communities were antagonistic toward one another and interacted only when compelled to do so by economic necessity. He demonstrates how Ukrainians have imagined their historical encounters with Jews under different historical contexts since the late 19^th Century.

Myroslav Shkandrij is Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba, and has published several books on Ukrainian and Russian literature and art - such as “Modernists, Marxists and the Nation: The Ukrainian Literary Discussion of the 1920s.” Ukrainian-Jewish relations is one of his research interests.

The fifth short-list selection is a book of poetry: Larissa Andrusyshyn’s “Mammoth”. This is her debut collection of poems and honours the memory of her father Ivan, a paleontologist. She was witness to the process and fact of her father’s death, and proceeds to find him again through a series of innovative poems. Death is examined without pathos, through the paleontologist’s magnifying glass and the geneticist’s microscope.

Larissa Andrusyshyn is a published poet who coordinates poetry workshops for at-risk youth. She was born in Reno, Nevada and moved to Montreal in 1989, where she now lives.

The Kobzar Literary Award 2012 jury was composed of four well-known Canadian writers: Denise Chong, Nino Ricci, M.G. Vassanji, and Randall Maggs.

Denise Chong is the author of award winning bestsellers: “The Concubine’s Children”– a non-fiction narrative of a Chinese family in Canada – and “The Girl in the Picture” which portrays life in war-torn Vietnam. Ms. Chong has been widely anthologized.

Nino Ricci’s novels have been published to critical acclaim around the world. They include the “Lives of the Saints” trilogy and “Testament”. His most recent novel, “The Origin of the Species,” earned him his second Governor General’s Award. He has taught writing across Canada and the US, and was recently appointed to the Order of Canada.

M.G. Vassanji is a prolific writer – author of six novels, collections of short stories, a travel memoir, and a biography. Winner of many literary prizes, he has twice won the Giller Prize for Best Novel. His latest novel is “The Assassin’s Song”, published in 2007. He is a member of the Order of Canada.

Randall Maggs lives in Newfoundland, where he has taught literature at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. He is the author of two collections of poetry, one of which – “Night Work: the Sawchuk Poems” – was the winner of the 2010 Kobzar Literary Award.

The Kobzar Literary Award 2012 Ceremony and Dinner will take place at Toronto’s lakefront Palais Royale. The Award was established and is supported by the Shevchenko Foundation and managed by Dr. Christine Turkewych, Director of Literary Arts. The Kobzar Literary Award Ceremony Committee of eighteen literati and dedicated professional women is chaired by Alla Shklar. For more information, visit the website at www.kobzarliteraryaward.com