Category: Uncategorized

Stolen Child — nice review

Here’s a nice review for Stolen Child in CM Online.

Here’s a quote:

     Although discovering Nadia’s true identity is at the core of Stolen Child, Skrypuch seamlessly integrates that story element into Nadia’s responses to the challenges of responding to everyday life in a new country.

      Stolen Child is a most worthy addition to the body of juvenile literature about the Second World War, and it is a novel that definitely breaks new ground in terms of its subject matter.

Highly Recommended.

Dave Jenkinson, CM‘s editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB.

another treadhead is born

I don’t have a fancy tread desk like Art Slade or Gillian Chan or Helene Boudreau. Mine isn’t even as fancy as Sylvia McNicoll‘s.

Alas, my treadmill is armless so I had to be a bit creative. My son gave me the idea of giving my treadmill duct tape suspenders and using firm cardboard because it is so lightweight and I can cut it to size myself. I write on this for about 90 minutes a day. It’s not exercise, but it does add variety to my writing positions, meaning that my back is less sore at the end of a writing day.

Kingston Symposium — WWI Internment

I was at the most amazing conference this past weekend. Several of my books focus on the unjust internment of Ukrainians in WWI by the Canadian government. After many years of many governments making excuses and shoving the incident under the carpet, the Harper government did the right thing and acknowledged the injustice. An endowment was established to ensure that Canadians are never again imprisoned because of their ethnicity.

This symposium brought together researchers and archivists, librarians, professors, creative artists and descendants of internees. The one thing we all had in common is the issue of WWI internment. Not all internees were Ukrainian, and so there were people from other affected groups — Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, German, Turkish. The synergy was amazing.

I especially savoured meeting the other artists who have been creating works about the internment.

To read more about the issue and the conference, go here.

The photo is by Sandra Semchuk.

Stolen Child tour

I’m visiting a few cities at the end of April/early May to promote my
most recent novel, Stolen Child.

Here are the public events I’ll be at. If you have the time and
inclination, please drop by and say hi!

Sunday, April 25

3PM:
presentation open to the public at:
Ukrainian Orthodox Parish Hall
1935 Barlee Road
Kelowna, BC V1Y 4S3

Monday, April 26
6:30pm
Vernon Elks Hall
3103 – 30th Street
Vernon, BC

Tuesday, April 27
6:30 PM
Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex,
9615 – 153 Avenue,
Edmonton

Thursday, April 29
7:30pm
Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural Centre
184 Alexander Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3B 0L6

Tuesday, May 4
7:30
McNally Robinson
Saskatoon SK

Brantford Summer Writing Workshops

The brochure for SWW 2010 is now available online here.

If you’re interested in attending, do send in your registration and cheque soon to ensure you get a spot. Anyone who has participated in kidcrit, Humber or has been to SWW before does not have to submit a writing sample. Just note that on the form.

I am thrilled with the line-up. We have kids’ publishers and adult publishers, kids’ writers and an adult writer. We also have an agent who does both. The most popular aspect of SWW are the blue pencil sessions. These are 10 minute face to face opportunities with publishers, editors and an agent. Think speed dating for writers. Every participant will have several blue pencils.

I am also thrilled that Diane Kerner, director of publishing for Scholastic Canada is presenting. She will be giving everyone who wants it a flash assessment. Ie, she’ll look at a cover letter and the first page of a manuscript and give her brutal assessment of how she would deal with it if it were a submission. People can stay anonymous, but they can put their names on their submissions if they want. She will be giving the flash assessments to everyone at once and we will all have a packet of the same submissions. This will provide invaluable insight into the submission process and also give a behind-the-editor’s-desk view of that process.

A caveat: if everyone on my tentative list of attendees does indeed attend, we will only have about 4 open spots. So send in your application asap.