Featured in Prairie Fire
Myrna was delighted to be in the same recent issue of the terrific Winnipeg-based literary magazine, Prairie Fire, as poets Alice Major, Bert Almon, Lorne Daniel and Stephen Berg, among other bright lights. Myrna’s contribution was a creative nonfiction, “Two Hills Diary” based on the journal she kept when living in Two Hills the summer of 1975, to research All of Baba’s Children.
Myrna didn’t know there was a reviewer in the audience when she presented The Seven Oaks Reader at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last August 15.
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The Seven Oaks Reader review by the Globe and Mail
Myrna in conversation with Edmonton’s grand old man of letters, Rudy Wiebe, at the Edmonton launch of his new book of essays, Where the Truth Lies. November 30, 2016.
Myrna presents The Seven Oaks Reader to audiences in Saskatoon and Winnipeg.
September 2016
The Word on the Street
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
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September 2016
Winnipeg Thin Air Festival
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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The Seven Oaks Reader, forworded by Heather Devine, offers a comprehensive retelling of one of Canada’s most interesting historical periods, the Fur Trade Wars. As in the companion volume, The Frog Lake Reader, Kostash incorporates period accounts and journals, histories, memoirs, songs and fictional retellings, from a wide range of sources, offering readers an engaging and exciting way back into still-controversial historical events.
Read Myrna’s article short-listed for the 2015 Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Association. She was excited to have been on the founding editorial board of Edmonton’s community magazine, The Yards.
Click on image to view larger version
The Creative Nonfiction Collective – founded in 2004 by Myrna Kostash and Betsy Warland – celebrated its tenth anniversary with a very classy conference in Calgary in May 2014. Included in the tributes to the founding members was this one to Myrna from another founder, Calgary writer Penney Kome.
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| The CNFC conference wound up with a literary walking tour in downtown Calgary. Myrna spoke of the Icelandic-Canadian writer Laura Salverson – who wrote in an office above this restaurant on Stephen Avenue – to a very appreciative audience! |
Fellows Plot Edmonton-area Outreach Program: On May 15th, Edmonton-area Fellows gathered at the University of Alberta Alumni House to discuss how they can contribute to making Canada better known to Canadians and the world, and promote the Society’s educational mission of expanding geographic knowledge and literacy. Lots of interesting ideas and strategies emerged and a follow-up meeting is slated for early Fall when one idea will be selected as an Edmonton Fellows outreach project.
Read a recent post about Myrna at ABC Friday Reads >
In memory of Andy Suknaski, 1942-2012
Andy was one of those prairie people and artist who showed me how to be one too. I had been away from homeplace for ten years when I returned to Alberta in 1975 to do the research for what would be All of Baba’s Children – I’m still here – and along the way I met Andy, a regular visitor to Edmonton and to my quarter section near Two Hills. (He once stayed a few days at the shack, as I thought fondly of the log cabin, because he knew where the key was, and left me a poem written on a brown paper bag. And then wrote a poem about me and my .22: he seemed to like the idea of a Ukrainian-Canadian Cossack babe.)
Andy represented a series of revelations for me. He wrote/sang a kind of poetry that, now that I think of it, was also a form of creative nonfiction, the sort of thing that DJs would go on to do, “sampling” all kinds of music/texts, sourced from wherever his curiosity, imagination, memory bank and passion took him, in a polyphony of voices, and gave us all permission to do the same. He retrieved for western Canadian and Ukrainian-Canadian writing the narratives of settlers crushed by the very land that was meant to free them, and the narratives of the Aboriginal nations for whom that very earth/zemlya had been motherland. And he did all this with his own earthiness that made him seem a wise old man blown in from the steppes when he was still in his thirties.
God rest the soul of Andrew Suknaski. Eternal be his memory. Vichnaya pamiat’.
Shortlisted for the 2012 Kobzar Literary Award
After giving a lecture on her work and that of other Canadian writers before an audience at the National Li bray in Sofia, Bulgaria, Myrna was presented with this Certificate for Contribution to the program, “Osinovi Kniga.”
Aboriginal Writers Collective reads with Myrna in Winnipeg, May 2011
Read the jury’s comments of Prodigal Daughter, the winner of the Best Nonfiction Book, from the Awards Gala of the Writers Guild of Alberta conference in Calgary.
Literary Symposium in Toronto celebrates 30th anniversary of Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, April 29, 2011
Winner of the 2011 Edmonton Book Prize!
Remember 1885!
The Aboriginal Writers Collective and visiting writer Myrna Kostash, author of The Frog Lake Reader invite you to an evening of readings and refreshments.
Thursday May 05 2011 7:30 pm
Winnipeg, Grant Park in the Atrium
City of Edmonton Book Prize
Myrna Kostash NOMINATED
Fernie Writers Conference 2011 Myrna Kostash will be teaching the week long Creative Non – Fiction component
Kostash in Victoria B.C.
January 20, 2011, at Open Space Gallery
Prodigal Poster Victoria January 2011
Prodigal Daughter makes long-list
http://holeinthebucket.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/alberta-readers-choice-top-ten/
January 21, 2011 2:30 University of Victoria Slavic Studies Speakers Series
Kostash featured in Orthodox Speakers Bureau
Kostash wins literary prize: Takes home Matt Cohen Award
Prodigal Daughter review in Winnipeg Free Press
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/spiritual+journey+into+Byzantium/4081962/story.html
October 14, 7:00 pm, ARTery, Edmonton: appearing in PEN Canada Writers Cabaret, a Writers Festival event
October 15 & 16, Saskatoon: appearances at the Saskatchewan Writers Guild conference .
October 17, 1:30 – 3:00, Saskatoon: Literary pow-wow at the Saskatoon Indian and Metis Friendship Centre with Louise Halfe, Doug Cuthand, Rita Bouvier, Morningstar Mercredi and me (I’m presenting The Frog Lake Reader.)
October 22 & 23, Vancouver: appearances at the Vancouver International Writers Festival
November 6, St Albert AB writing workshop
November 16, 5:30 pm, Calgary AB: with Vern Thiessen, “The Making of The Gallows Tree,” a discussion, a Festival of Ideas pre-festival event.
November 20, 3:00 pm at the Stanley Milner Library downtown Edmonton: staged reading of my play, The Gallows is Also a Tree, inspired by people and events from Frog Lake history in 1885, directed by Vern Thiessen; part of The Festival of Ideas.
May 28 2010: The Frog Lake Reader wins the Canadian Authors Association (Alberta Branch) “Exporting Alberta” Award, to assist in the promotion and marketing of the book outside Alberta. In receiving the Award, Kostash expressed thanks for the possibility now to make the book better known in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, especially among Aboriginal communities.
Among the judges’ (anonymous) quotes:
Judges’ comments (anonymous): “The Frog Lake Reader is a book of massive cultural significance…. A fascinating read and visionary accomplishment.” “The Frog Lake Reader is history at its best… This riveting book gives us insights into the different urgencies, currents and personalities that make up our history.” “The Frog Lake Reader is a must-read for those interested in understanding the flow of history, and the tide of events that can lead to unspeakable acts. I can see this book being on the reading list as a required text for many courses across Canada, and beyond.”
This is the group that was part of the program hosted by the Canadian Literature Centre at a fund-raising cocktail party at the newly-opened Art Gallery of Alberta, March 1 2010. We writers were invited to read for a few minutes to a glamorous crowd drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvres.
2009 Salute to Excellence Award >
U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Myrna Kostash (2003-4)
The Alberta Council for the Ukrainian Arts awarded its 2001 Excellence in Artistry Award to three of us (we make creative company!!) the Dnipro Choir, potter Audrey Uzwyshyn, and me. If you read the invitation closely you will see that back in 2001 there was still the Ukrainian Bookstore on 97th street (since moved to a site at Ft Edmonton Park) and a Ukrainian pub (sadly also no longer in business. In Spring 2007 ACUA celebrated its 20th anniversary in an edition of its magazine, ACUA Vitae, which includes an extended appreciation of me by fellow Edmonton Ukrainian, Jars Balan.