Rudy Wiebe: Essays on His Works
The anthology, Rudy Wiebe: Essays on His Works, compiled and edited by Bianca Lakoseljac, examines Wiebe's works and his achievements as an author, editor, professor and mentor who helped shape successful authors and encouraged a passion for Canadian literature. Intriguingly, while Wiebe's writing has been labeled as "brilliant" and "magnificent," it has also been seen as "challenging" due in part to his propensity for a rather Faulknerian turn of phrase and his use of multifaceted storymaking approaches, such as intertextual and intratextual dynamics, and the sociopolitical views and religious beliefs they embody. Rudy Wiebe's literary work raises him to the status of a Canadian literary icon whose fiction and nonfiction are seen as major contributions to Canadian literature, and will continue to be enjoyed for generations to come.
Ghosts in a Photograph a chronicle
In Ghosts in a Photograph, award-winning nonfiction writer Myrna Kostash delves into the lives of her grandparents, all of whom moved from Galicia, now present-day Ukraine, to Alberta at the turn of the twentieth century. Discovering a packet of family mementos, Kostash begins questioning what she knows about her extended families’ pasts and whose narrative is allowed to prevail in Canada.
The Seven Oaks Reader
The long rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company for control of the fur trade in Canada's northwest came to an explosive climax on June 19th, 1816, at the so-called Battle of Seven Oaks. Armed buffalo hunters – Indigenous allies of the Nor-Westers – confronted armed colonists of the HBC's Selkirk settlement near the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers in today's Winnipeg. This "battle" would prove to be a formative event for Métis self-determination as well as laying down a legacy for settlers to come.
Unbound:Ukrainian-Canadians Writing Home
What does it mean to be Ukrainian in contemporary Canada? The Ukrainian Canadian writers in Unbound challenge the conventions of genre – memoir, fiction, poetry, biography, essay – and the boundaries that separate ethnic and authorial identities and fictional and non-fictional narratives. These intersections become the sites of new, thought-provoking and poignant creative writing by some of Canada’s best-known Ukrainian Canadian authors.
Prodigal Daughter
A geographical, historical, and spiritual odyssey by Canada’s high priestess of creative nonfiction.A deep-seated questioning of her inherited religion resurfaces when Myrna Kostash chances upon the icon of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. A historical, cultural and spiritual odyssey that begins in Edmonton, ranges around the Balkans, and plunges into a renewed vision of Byzantium in search of the Great Saint of the East delivers the author to an unexpected place—the threshold of her childhood church. An epic work of travel memoir, Prodigal Daughter sings with immediacy and depth, rewarding readers with a profound sense of an adventure they have lived. This book will appeal to readers interested in Ukrainian-Canadian culture , the Eastern Church, and medieval history, as well as to fans of Kostash’s bold creative nonfiction.
Slice Me Some Truth
Finally, here is a comprehensive overview of Canadian creative nonfiction, a genre which keeps attracting more and more writers and readers as it spans everything from memoir to travelogue to lyric essay to personal journalism..to who knows what next?
Frog Lake Reader
Kostash merges the past and the present in The Frog Lake Reader, which offers a panoramic perspective on the tragic events surrounding the Frog Lake Massacre of 1885. By bringing together eyewitness accounts and journal excerpts, memoirs and contemporary fiction, and excerpts from interviews with historians, Kostash sheds new light on a tragedy often overshadowed by Louis Riel’s rebellion during the same year.
Locating the Past/Discovering the Present
Myrna's essay, "Memoirs of Byzantium", is part of a collection that examines the production and recreation of religious ideas and images and locations. The contents cover historical periods from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world, and geopolitical locations from Europe to North American to South Asia. The essayists look at contact and conflict between insiders and outsiders, centres and margins, Jews and Christians, Slavs and Greeks, and ancient ritual behaviours and modern television broadcasting.
Reading the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Saskatchewan River
Myrna Kostash takes us on an amazing voyage down the North Saskatchewan River. Framed within her own compelling view of the historic waterway, Kostash (in company with researcher Duane Burton) presents the story of the river and its people through many voices.Winner of Award for Publishing, Saskatchewan Book Awards.
The Next Canada
What kind of Canada does the under-35 generation see themselves heir to? The only way to find out, Myrna Kostash decided, was to travel across Canada and talk to young people in all walks of life who are rethinking what it is to be Canadian. Her aim was to draw a map of the next Canada and see how its ideals compared to those of her generation. The result is not just a series of interviews but also an acute interpretation and forecast of what lies ahead. The conclusions are surprising.Finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
The Doomed Bridegroom: A Memoir
Rich with worldly scenarios and passionate characters, The Doomed Bridegroom narrates one woman’s arousal by rebel men, real and imagined, in Canada, eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean. This memoir of political and erotic attraction to the fated hero begins in the 1960s with the first bridegroom, a draft dodger from New York with spirited political convictions and a troubled separation from love. It ends in the present with a wistful encounter in a Belgrade café with a young Serbian poet.
Bloodlines: A Journey Into Eastern Europe
Selected as one of the best books of the year by Maclean’s and the Globe and MailTake a second-generation Ukrainian-Canadian, a feminist, a writer, an alumna of the 1960s, and put her on a train in Belgrade heading north. What exactly is her business?
No Kidding: Inside the Life of Teenage Girls
Count on being shocked, surprised, and informed as you read this wide-ranging investigative report from inside the secret world of teenage girls. You’ll listen in as more than 50 representative young women candidly share their thoughts on the topics that matter to them most: boys, best friends, family, school, sex, the future, and more. This profound, insightful work, by one of Canada’s foremost journalists, was selected as one of the ten ‘best books of the year’ by Maclean’s magazine.Winner of Alberta’s Nonfiction Book of the Year Award.
Long Way From Home
Long Way From Home is a passionate and evocative account of Kostash’s generation with whom she shared the struggle for change and the search for new values. The book has been a labour of love for one of Canada’s finest journalists and writers. Kostash pulls us back to a time when the whole world and particularly Canada was being profoundly influenced by American attitudes and events. But for Canada, the Sixties were profoundly different from the Sixties of America and it is this story that Myrna Kostash has written.
All of Baba's Children
The quest for the true story of the immigrant, for the realities of Baba’s life, has taken author Myrna Kostash through a confrontation with the architects of the romantic cover-up: her parents’ generation, the sons and daughters of Clifford Sifton’s Sheepskins. The process of assimilation has subverted events and personalities that Kostash now brings to light. The result is a rewritten history of the Ukrainians in western Canada, a sometimes critical, often compassionate view of the motivations of three generations, an examination of the tokenism of modern-day multiculturalism, a final arrival at the positive political and emotional significance of an ethnic consciousness.