Kostash nabs $25K Kobzar book prize

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This article was published 30/03/2024 (908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Edmonton author Myrna Kostash has won the $25,000 Kobzar Book Award for her memoir Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle, published by NeWest Press.

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The $25,000 award, which is presented biennially by the Shevchenko Foundation, is awarded to a book with thematic connections to the Ukrainian Canadian experience. The winning author receives $20,000 while the publisher receives $5,000. This year’s awards ceremony was held on March 21 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Kostash’s book explores the story of her grandparents’ immigration to Canada from Galicia, now known as Ukraine, to Alberta at the turn of the century after Kostash discovered some family mementos.

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South of the border, the National Book Critics Circle award winners in six categories were also announced March 21.

The top fiction prize went to Lorrie Moore for her novel I Am Homeless if This is Not My Home, while the top non-fiction award went to Roxanna Asgarian for We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.

The top biography prize went to Jonny Steinberg for Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, the best autobiography was awarded to Safiya Sinclair for How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, the top criticism prize was awarded to Tina Post for Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression and best poetry went to Kim Hyesoon for Phantom Pain Wings (translated by Don Mee Choi).

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ARP Books is holding a First Fridays talk at its office (205-70 Arthur St.) on April 5 from 7-8 p.m. featuring a pair of the publisher’s authors discussing inner-city Winnipeg.

Owen Toews (Stolen City, Island Falls) and Kathy Mallett (co-editor of Indigenous Resistance & Development in Winnipeg: 1960-2000) will build on a December 2023 conversation they had with Nahlah Ayed on CBC Ideas about Winnipeg’s inner city. Admission is free and all ARP Books titles will be on sale for 20 per cent off.

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A translation of the work of 17th-century Austrian poet Catharina Regina Von Greiffenberg, published by Winnipeg’s CMU Press, has picked up a prize from the 2024 Illumination Book Awards based in Traverse City, Mich.

Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina Von Greiffenberg, published in early 2023 and translated from the German by Winnipeg poets Joanne Epp, Sally Ito and Sarah Klassen, won the silver medal in the poetry category of the prizes, which are awarded to exemplary Christian books.

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The winners of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild’s second annual Dave Williamson Short Story Competition — affectionately known as “The Dave” — have been announced.

Calgary’s Lisa Pollock took the $1,000 first-place prize for The Promise, Grande Pointe, Man.’s Lindsey Taylor won the $600 second-place prize for Canadian Cougars and the $400 third-place prize went to Winnipeg’s Yvonne Kyle for the story A Good Day for Clothes.

Honourable mentions were given to Winnipeg’s Rowan McCandless for Homeward Bound, Winnipeg’s Cheryl Parisien for Pies, Winnipeg’s Margaret Spratt for The Carnival of Bones and Gibson, B.C.’s Kathleen Vance for Queen of the Railroad Bridge.

The stories will be published in a collection entitled Beyond Boundaries II, which will be launched in May at Video Pool.

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Íslendingadagurinn, the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba, has opened submissions for their poetry and short story contests.

The competitions are open to all in three categories — junior (ages 12 and under), intermediate (13-18) and open — with material reflecting Icelandic culture given preference. (The theme of this year’s festival is “Celebrating a Century of Fjallkona.”)

A maximum of three poems and/or one short story (maximum 1,200 words) may be submitted by June 7, and winners of the cash prizes will be announced closer to the festival in early August (and published in the festival program and website).

For complete details, see wfp.to/jib.

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