Writing Ukraine

A Canadian writer meditates on her work and identity in the midst of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Myrna Kostash’s term as writer in residence at Athabasca University began shortly after the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022. In this essay, based on her writer-in-residence lecture at Athabasca University, Kostash offers a self-critical reflection on her past writing and considers how her visits to Ukraine and the ongoing war have nuanced her writing about and understanding of Ukrainian Canadian identity.

Born and raised in Edmonton, Myrna Kostash arrived on the literary scene in 1977 with the publication of the now classic All of Baba’s Children. She is the author, among many other titles, of Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe (1993), which won the Alberta Culture and Writers’ Guild of Alberta prize for Best Non-Fiction, The Doomed Bridegroom: A Memoir (1998), and Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium (2010), which received the 2011 City of Edmonton Book Prize and the 2011 Writers’ Guild of Alberta Wilfred Eggleston Award for Best Nonfiction. Her most recent publication, Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle, was honoured with the Shevchenko Foundation’s 2024 Kobzar Book Award. Kostash, who has served as president of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and as chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, has lectured all across Canada and in Europe on a wide array of contemporary topics. In 2010, she was awarded the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.