Myrna Kostash

Last updated

Myrna Kostash (born September 2, 1944) is a Canadian writer and journalist. She has published several non-fiction books and written for many Canadian magazines including Chatelaine . Of Ukrainian descent, she was born in Edmonton, Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

Contents

Career

A founding member of The Periodical Writers' Association of Canada and of the Writers' Guild of Alberta, she served as president of the WGA (1989–90) and as chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (1993–94). She served as Alberta representative to the board of governors of the Canadian Conference of the Arts (1996–2000). She is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and PEN. She is a founding member of the Creative Nonfiction Collective, and served as its president 2006–9. She has also for several years been an executive member of the board of directors of the Parkland Institute, an organization dedicated to social research and located at the University of Alberta.

Kostash is the recipient of several Canada Council, Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts and Secretary of State (Multiculturalism) grants. In 1985, she was awarded a Silver citation in the National Magazine Awards and was short-listed in 1997. In 1999 she was a finalist in the Western Magazine Awards. In 1988, her book, No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls, received the Alberta Culture and Writers' Guild of Alberta prizes for Best Non-Fiction. In 1994 she was awarded the same prize for her book, Bloodlines: A Journey Into Eastern Europe. In 1993 she was a participant in the Maclean-Hunter Arts Journalism Seminar, the Banff Centre for the Arts, under the direction of Alberto Manguel. In 2001, her book, The Next Canada: In Search of the Future Nation, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. In 2006, Reading the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Saskatchewan was a prize winner at the Saskatchewan Book Awards.

Kostash is a recipient of the Alberta Achievement Award (1988) and of the Alberta Council of Ukrainian Arts “Excellence in Artistry” Award, 2001, the Canadian Conference of the Arts Honorary Life Member award, 2002, the Queen's Jubilee Award, 2002, the Alberta Centennial Medal, 2005, the City of Edmonton's 2006 Citation Award, “Salute to Excellence,” and the Writers' Guild of Alberta Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award, 2008. She was the 2010 recipient of the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life, from the Writers'Trust of Canada, the first writer of creative non-fiction to win the award. [1]

Works

Books

Contributions

Other media: film, television radio and stage

She has written for film, notably:

And for stage:

In 1985 she wrote a television drama

And on radio:

Related Research Articles

Bonnie Burnard was a Canadian short story writer and novelist, best known for her 1999 novel, A Good House, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Gregory Hollingshead, CM is a Canadian novelist. He was formerly a professor of English at the University of Alberta, and he lives in Toronto, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aritha Van Herk</span>

Aritha van Herk,, is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.

Dianne Warren is a Canadian novelist, dramatist and short story writer.

Anne Szumigalski, SOM was a Canadian poet.

Edna Alford is a Canadian author and editor. She was a graduate of Adam Bowden Collegiate, Saskatoon, and got scholarships to attend the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts. Some of her teachers include; Jack Hodgins, W. P. Kinsella, Rudy Wiebe, and Robert Kroetsch. She majored in English at the University of Saskatchewan, and worked summers at hospitals and nursing homes for the chronically ill. As a writer she is known for the collections "A Sleep Full of Dreams and The Garden of Eloise Loon". She has also won the Marian Engel Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. As an editor she co-founded the magazine Dandelion and edited fiction for Grain from 1985–1990. Edna was born to George and Edith Sample and was the second eldest of the children aside from brother Stanley. She also has brothers Lorne (deceased) and Gregory as well as a younger sister Beth. Edna is currently married to internationally known theoretical mathematician Richard Cushman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Scott Tysdal</span> Canadian poet and film director (born 1978)

Daniel Scott Tysdal is a Canadian poet and film director whose work approaches the lyric mode with an experimental spirit. In June 2007, Tysdal received the ReLit Award for Poetry.

Beth Goobie is a Canadian poet and fiction writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Jill Robinson</span> Canadian writer, editor and teacher (born 1955)

Jacqueline Jill Robinson is a Canadian writer and editor. She is the author of a novel and four collections of short stories. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals including Geist, the Antigonish Review, Event, Prairie Fire and the Windsor Review. Her novel, More In Anger, published in 2012, tells the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters who bear the emotional scars of loveless marriages, corrosive anger and misogyny.

Janice Elva MacDonald is a Canadian writer of literary and mystery novels, textbooks, non-fiction, and stories for both adults and children. She is best known as the creator of a series of comic academic mystery novels featuring reluctant amateur sleuth Miranda "Randy" Craig, all of which are set in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Writers' Guild of Alberta (WGA) was founded in 1980 as a non-profit organization for writers based in Alberta, Canada. It claims to be the largest provincial writers' organization in Canada, representing approximately 1,000 writers throughout the province.

Cassie Stocks is a Canadian writer, who won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2013 for her debut novel, Dance, Gladys, Dance.

Sheri Benning is a Canadian writer from Saskatchewan, Canada. Her two books of poetry, Earth After Rain and Thin Moon Psalm have garnered numerous awards. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have also appeared in many Canadian literary journals and anthologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Silverthorne</span> Canadian writer

Judith Silverthorne, née Judith Iles is a Canadian author specializing in children's literature, as well as nonfiction about historical Saskatchewan woodworkers and furniture makers, and an immigrant potter, Peter Rupchan.

Geoffrey Ursell was a Canadian writer, who won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1985 for his novel Perdue, or How the West Was Lost.

Connie Gault is a Canadian novelist, playwright and short story writer. She is best known for her novel A Beauty, which was a longlisted nominee for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The Alberta Literary Awards (ALA), administered by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, have been awarded annually since 1982 to recognize outstanding writing by Alberta authors. The awards honour fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children's literature. At the first public ALA Gala in 1994, the inaugural Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award was given to W. O. Mitchell.

Cecelia Frey is a Canadian poet, novelist, and short story writer. Her works have appeared in literary magazines and in numerous anthologies, and broadcast on CBC Radio as well as produced by the Women's Television Network. She was the 2018 recipient of the Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award.

Susan Ouriou is a Canadian fiction writer, literary translator and editor.

Jon Whyte was a Canadian poet, curator and non-fiction writer in Banff, Alberta. He believed poetry was a "public act" and that it informs and educates in a way almost no other medium can. He was an advocate for the Canadian West and specifically the Rockies in both poetry, non-fiction, and his activities as a conservationist. Even today, his name is considered by many to be synonymous with the Canadian Rockies.

References

  1. Matt Cohen Award and CKUA radio story Archived 2011-09-27 at the Wayback Machine