Scholarships and Workshops

Scholarship and Faculty position at Humber School for Writers in Toronto

In a partnership between Shevchenko Foundation and Humber College in Toronto, Humber’s annual “Writer’s Workshop” in July 14-20, 2007 offers the Kobzar Writer's Scholarship and welcomes Marsha Skrypuch as a faculty member in a week-long writers workshop.

The Kobzar Writer’s Scholarship is a full scholarship which covers registration, accommodation and some travel. This scholarship is offered to a writer anywhere in Canada who has an “advanced manuscript” on a Ukrainian Canadian theme. This scholarship is intended to assist in preparing the manuscript for publication. The manuscript may be submitted in any of several categories; poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays, musicals and young people’s literature.

For information regarding applications to the summer program and the scholarship

please visit Humber at creativeandperformingarts.humber.ca/content/writers_summer.html

or contact Hilary Higgins at hilary.higgins@humber.ca

or contact Christine Turkewych at kobzarliteraryaward@yahoo.ca

Profile: Marsha Skrypuch, M.L.S. has been a professional writer since 1988.

Publications: Silver Threads (Penguin,1996) was nominated for the Amelia Frances/Howard Gibbon award for illustration, listed as a Best Bet for 1996 by the Ontario Library Association, and was chosen as a Children's Choice Selection 1998 by the Canadian Children's Book Centre. Silver Threads is a Ukrainian folk tale picture book set in the Canadian prairies during WWI and is loosely based on Marsha's own grandfather's experiences as an interned "enemy alien". The Best Gifts (illustrated by Halina Below, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1998) The Best Gifts was enthusiastically approved by La Leche League International and is included in their list of recommended children's books .Marsha's first young adult novel, The Hunger,( Dundurn Press , 1999) was chosen as a Children's Choice Selection 2000 by the Canadian Children's Book Centre. "The Hunger is a beautifully written account of one young woman's journey to find out about her heritage as she struggles with the very real issues of anorexia." (Horizon)

Enough  (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000) is a folk tale picture book in the tradition of Silver Threads. It tells of Marusia and her father, and how they save one village from starvation. It is set during the Famine in 1930s Ukraine and partly in the Canadian prairies during the dustbowl. Enough was chosen as a Children's Choice Book 2001 by the Canadian Children's Book Centre, and "highly recommended" by ResourceLinks, which also lists it as one of the best picture books for 2001.

Hope's War (Dundurn Press Canada 2001) explores how Kataryna Baliuk, a gifted fine arts student, is hoping to have a fresh start at Cawthra School for the Arts, after a less-than-successful year at the neighbouring Catholic high school. But her hopes for a peaceful grade ten are shattered when she finds the RCMP interrogating her grandfather Danylo Feschuk and learns that Danylo is accused of being a policeman for the Nazis in World War II Ukraine and is suspected of having participated in atrocities against civilians. It was nominated for the 2003 Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, the 2004 Saskatchewan Snow Willow Award, and the 2004 Alberta Rocky Mountain Readers' Choice Award.

Additional publications: Nobody's Child (2003); Aram's Choice (2006 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside), the story of one Armenian orphan's journey to Canada in 1923.

Kobzar's Children: A Century of Untold Ukrainian Stories (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2006), an anthology of short historical fiction, memoirs, and poems written about the Ukrainian immigrant experience. The stories span a century of history and they contain stories of internment, homesteading, famine, displacement, concentration camps, and the Orange Revolution.