The 2018 Kobzar Literary Award ceremony was held March 1st in Toronto. The gala dinner saw five shortlisted finalists, including PCUH faculty Professors Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and Bohdan Kordan, read selections from their nominated books. Co-editors Lisa Grekul and Lindy Ledohowski were awarded the $20,000 prize for their book Unbound: Ukrainian Canadians Writing Home.
The biennial Kobzar Award, presented by the Shevchenko Foundation, recognizes a Canadian work that most effectively presents a Ukrainian Canadian theme. These writings may include fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama. When speaking of the shortlisted books, the jury members praised the writers for their “creativity and insightful understanding of Ukrainian-Canadian identity, culture and history.”
The 2018 Kobzar Literary Award shortlist included:
- Lisa Grekul and Lindy Ledohowski, ed. for Unbound: Ukrainian Canadians Writing Home, published by University of Toronto Press (2016) – Winner
- Bohdan S. Kordan for No Free Man: Canada, the Great War and the Enemy Alien Experience, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press (2016)
- Natalia Khanenko-Friesen for Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland, and Folk Imagination in the Twentieth Century, published by University of Wisconsin Press (2015)
- Erin Moure for Kapusta, published by House of Anansi Press (2015)
- Alexandra Risen for Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden (a memoir), published by Viking, a division of Penguin Random House Canada (2016)
For more information on the shortlisted publications, click here.
