"Centuries of Presence. The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Prose of the 1880s–1930s" is the winner of the 2025 Encounter Literary Prize
Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE), a Canadian charitable non-profit organization, and Ukraine's NGO Publishers' Forum (Lviv, Ukraine) are pleased to announce that Centuries of Presence. The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Prose of the 1880s–1930s, compiled by Khrystyna Semeryn and published in 2024 by Kyiv’s Dukh i Litera, is the fifth winner of Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize.
The announcement was made at an award ceremony on 3 October, which also featured a discussion about the books short-listed for the 2025 prize. A video of the ceremony will shortly be available on the UJE website.
The anthology, as Semeryn told Ukraine’s Hromadske Radio in a recent interview, “covers several generations of writers from all parts of Ukraine, who were in different empires and countries at the time but created the fabric of modern Ukrainian literature as we know it. The anthology begins with Ivan Franko, and I discuss the writers of his generation. We move on to the writings of the early 20th century and authors who embraced modernist aesthetics. The anthology ends with Kharkiv-based writers. It is a voluminous and varied selection of texts and writers showing the diverse ways of depicting Jews and the Jewish world in Ukrainian literature.” Some of the writers in the anthology are familiar to Ukrainian readers, while other lesser-known names have been resurrected to take their place in a modern Ukrainian literary context.
The anthology spans the time frame from the 1880s to the first third of the 20th century.
Semeryn, who holds a PhD, is a Ukrainian researcher, journalist, and writer. She has conducted research at the University of Augsburg (Germany), the Center for Eastern Studies (Poland), Indiana University Bloomington, Fordham University, and Northwestern University (US). She has served as an expert for the House of Europe (2025), the Ukrainian Book Institute (since 2020), and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (2021–2022). She is a prolific editor and author, having penned articles for publications in the United States and Europe. More information about Semeryn is available on her website.
“The books submitted in the fiction category for the Encounter prize presented various genres, which is exciting,” said Natalia A. Feduschak, UJE's Director of Communications. “It shows that the relationship between Ukrainians and Jews, and how these two peoples interact with and see each other, both in the past and present, is an important topic for Ukrainian writers and publishers. This exploration continues even as Russia continues its genocidal war against Ukraine and is a strong pushback against that country’s propaganda that attempts to frame Ukrainians as antisemites.”
Members of the international jury commented on the winning entry and the short-listed books submitted for the 2025 Encounter Prize:
Ostap Slyvynsky (Ukraine/Jury Head)
This year, the jury faced a difficult task, as the short-listed works represented very different genres: original modern prose, translations, and finally, an anthology. These are incomparable quantities, each of which is important in its own way. So, the choice of the anthology Centuries of Presence. The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Prose of the 1880s–1930s, as the winner was perhaps a certain compromise, which in no way diminishes the value of the work itself. This is not only a literary but also a cultural project that presents Ukrainian classical literature from a little-known perspective, highlighting its openness to and sincere interest in Jewish culture. It also gives us an important argument when accusations of Ukrainian culture being “inherently antisemitic” are once again made. So, this book is not only an important educational project but also, in a sense, a restoration of historical justice.
Maria Genkin (United States /Jury Member)
Most of the books on this year’s short list evoke the world that existed before the Holocaust and before Soviet rule all but erased traditional Jewish settlements — shtetls — across Ukraine and other Central European lands.
Eli Schechtman’s autobiographical novel Rings on the Soul recounts a childhood in a Polissia shtetl. Written in Yiddish and translated into Ukrainian by his daughter, it is a poignant chronicle of a vanished world — erased not only by the Holocaust but also by the Soviet drive to assimilate Jews into the Russian language and Soviet culture. Schechtman called himself “the last Jewish writer” of these lands. By this, he meant the last writing in Yiddish — a language of many writers who were imprisoned and killed during the postwar Doctors’ Plot trials in the Soviet Union — and one of the rare survivors.
Sonia Kapinus’ contemporary novel White Rabbits depicts the lives of Russified and Christianized Jews in early 20th-century Odesa, showing how assimilation, in the end, offered no protection from persecution.
Isaac Leib Peretz returns readers to the Hasidic settlements, with their distinct traditions and spiritual life.
Finally, the anthology Centuries of Presence, edited by Khrystyna Semeryn, presents short prose by Ukrainian writers about Jewish life in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires before the First World War and during the turmoil of their collapse.
Together, these works form an important testament to the interconnectedness of Jewish and Ukrainian experiences and to the long history of translating those experiences.
Two of the short-listed books were originally written in Yiddish and have now been translated into Ukrainian for the first time — a continuation of a tradition interrupted during the height of Soviet terror. Schechtman’s early works, for example, were translated into Ukrainian in the late 1920s. The anthology highlights many cases in which Ukrainian authors were translated into Yiddish — or knew Yiddish themselves and translated folklore and literature into Ukrainian. Reading the biographies included, we see how Soviet repression silenced writers: some were killed, others forced into exile or self-censorship. A striking example is the Ukrainian writer of Jewish descent Leonid Pervomaisky, who deliberately removed overtly Jewish or Ukrainian elements from his stories and stipulated in his will that only these sanitized versions be published. The anthology presents both versions side by side, and the contrast is telling.
Another central theme of many short-listed books is the pogroms, their perpetrators, and their causes. Jews in the Russian Empire lived in constant fear of mobs incited against them, and the authors here show clearly where responsibility lay: in the rotten foundations of the Russian monarchy, which operated through both church and state and actively supported the Black Hundreds. Ukrainian writers were horrified by the Jews’ living conditions, their poverty, and their lack of educational opportunities; they were anguished witnesses to the violence of pogroms. We need more Ukrainian historians and writers to investigate this period and the roots of the pogroms. My hope is that the works short-listed for this year’s prize will help stimulate that exploration.
Volodymyr Yeshkilev (Ukraine/Jury Member)
The anthology Centuries of Presence. The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Prose of the 1880s–1930s (compiled by Khrystyna Semeryn) won Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize for 2025 thanks to the combination of academic thoroughness in the selection of prose texts and a clear goal of presenting the formation of complex identities of the modern era through the mirror of literature.
What strikes me about this anthology is that, despite the diversity of textual "mirrors," the result is not a mosaic puzzle but a holistic canvas, a panorama of the existential flow in which history retreats before presence, where life overcomes the scheme, and the local truth of the individual triumphs over the collective truth of nations.
This anthology demonstrates how writers employed their special tools, such as creative induction and recording ordinary and yet revealing facts, to recast national memory about the "collective Other."
In fact, this is what makes the anthology a cultural event worthy of high honor.
Our stories are incomplete without each other
Founded in 2019, Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize is awarded annually to the most influential work in literature and nonfiction (in alternate years) that fosters Ukrainian-Jewish understanding, helping solidify Ukraine's place as a multiethnic society and giving truth to the motto, "Our stories are incomplete without each other."
The prize is valued at 7000 Euros. The winner receives 6000 Euros, with the author/s receiving 4000 Euros and the publisher 2000 Euros. Four (4) incentive awards will receive 250 Euros each.
The first Encounter Prize was awarded in September 2020 in the fiction category to Vasyl Makhno for his novel Eternal Calendar (Lviv: The Old Lion Publishing House, 2019). The second year of the award in 2021 was dedicated to the nonfiction category, with the winner being Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern for the Ukrainian-language translation of his groundbreaking work, The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2018). The third year of the award was held in 2023 in the fiction category, and Sofia Andrukhovych was named the winner for her novel Amadoka (Lviv: The Old Lion Publishing House, 2020). In 2024’s nonfiction category, Yuriy Skira won for his book Solid. The Life-Saving Footwear Factory (Lviv: Choven Publishing House, 2023).
The 2022 Encounter Prize was not awarded in connection with russia's genocidal war against Ukraine.
Despite the many challenges faced by Ukraine's literary community, 11 Ukrainian publishers submitted 16 books in the 2025 competition. The long list featured nine books, five of which ended up on the short list.
Along with Centuries of Presence. The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Prose of the 1880s–1930s, the following books were short-listed:
Sonya Kapinus, White Rabbits (Kyiv: Publishing House ORLANDO, 2024)
Sonya Kapynus, Bili Krolyky (Kyiv: Vydavnychyy dim ORLANDO, 2024)
Mia Marchenko, Kateryna Pekur, Children of the Burning Time (Kharkiv Readberry, 2024)
Miya Marchenko, Kateryna Pekur, Dity vohnennoho chasu (Kharkiv: Readberry, 2024)
Isaac Leib Peretz, Hasidic, (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2024)
Yitskhok Leybesh Perets, Khasydsʹke (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2024)
Eli Schechtman, Ringen oyf der Neshome (Rings on the Soul) (Lviv: Apriori Publishing House, 2023)
Eli Schechtman, Goyrl. Kilʹtsya na dushi (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Apriori, 2023)
The international jury for the 2025 Encounter Prize is comprised of:
Ostap Slyvynsky (Ukraine/Jury Head)
Ostap Slyvynsky is a celebrated Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist, and scholar. He has authored five books of poetry, including Winter King (2018), and A Dictionary of War (2023), a documentary book based on testimonies of witnesses of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. His poetry has been published internationally, and Winter King was recently short-listed for the American Translation Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize. He was awarded the Antonych Literary Prize (1997), the Hubert Burda Prize for young poets from Eastern Europe (2009), and the Kovaliv Fund Prize (2013). His works have been translated into more than 20 languages. He translates fiction and scholarly literature from English, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Polish. Slyvynsky is also a professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv) and a member of PEN Ukraine.
Maria Genkin (United States/Jury Member)
Born and raised in Lviv, Maria Genkin moved to the United States to attend university. In 2020, she joined the board of Razom for Ukraine, a U.S.-based non-profit organization dedicated to fostering a secure and democratic Ukraine. An avid reader, she spearheaded Razom Literature, a program aimed at enhancing the visibility of Ukrainian literature in the English-speaking world by cultivating relationships with publishers, translators, booksellers, and readers. Each year, Razom Literature provides select grants to support the promotion of books by Ukrainian authors or to cover translation costs. Razom Literature was launched as a continuation of another organizational initiative, the Razom Book Club, which she manages. Genkin regularly moderates book events and lives in New York City with her family.
Volodymyr Yeshkilev (Ukraine/Jury Member)
Volodymyr Yeshkilev is a well-known Ukrainian prose writer, screenwriter, playwright, and publicist. Among Yeshkilev's seventeen published novels are the conspiracy saga, Situation “Zero,” a trilogy about the times of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Ruin (Union, Cain, and Malkh), and the story of Hryhorii Skovoroda’s young years, Androgyn (All Corners of the Triangle). He is also known to the Ukrainian reader as a publicist, blogger, and author of cultural articles and essays. In 2022, the full-length feature film Pattern, based on his novel of the same name, was released. His novel Cain became the winner of the national book rating "Book of the Year 2020" in the "Genre Literature" category.
