Shortlist for the 2021 "Encounter" literary prize announced
The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, a Canadian charitable non-profit organization, and Ukraine’s NGO “Publishers Forum” (Lviv, Ukraine) are pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2021 “Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize” ™, which this year is in the category of non-fiction.
The shortlisted titles for the second year of the “Encounter” prize are:
In other times. Young years in Eastern Galicia (In einer anderen Zeit. Jugendjahre in Ostgalizien) by Soma Morgenstern, 2019 (Publishing House 21, Chernivtsi)
They Were Called Upon: The Monks of the Studite Order and the Holocaust by Yuri Skira, 2019 (Dukh i Litera, Kyiv)
Wandering Stars in Ukraine: Pages from the History of Jewish Theater by Iryna Meleshkina, 2019 (Dukh i Litera, Kyiv)
The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, 2018 (Krytyka, Kyiv)
A Jew Again: From Bolechow to Communist Poland to the Jewish State by Shlomo Adler, 2020 (Kameniar, Lviv)
The Prize, valued at 6,000 Euros, is divided between the author and publisher: the author will receive 4,000 Euros and the publisher 2,000 Euros. Four finalists will receive a prize of 250 Euros each.
The ceremony for the “Encounter” prize will take place in September 2021 at the 28th Lviv International BookForum.
The 2021 international jury for the "Encounter" prize in the category of nonfiction is comprised of:
Mykola Riabchuk (Ukraine, Jury Head)
Mykola Riabchuk is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Honorary President of the Ukrainian PEN Centre. He has written several books and many articles on civil society, state and nation building, nationalism, national identity, and post-Communist transition in Eastern Europe. Five of his books were translated into Polish, and one into French (De la petit Russie á l’Ukraine, 2003), German (Die reale und die imaginierte Ukraine, 2005), and Hungarian (A ket Ukraina, 2015). His work was distinguished with a number of national and international awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Program (1994, 2016), the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program (2011), and The European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) Fellowship Programme (2013). His most recent books published in English are Eastern Europe since 1989: Between the Loosened Authoritarianism and Unconsolidated Democracy (Warsaw, 2020), and At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden: Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization (Stuttgart, 2021).
Liliana Hentosh (Ukraine, Jury Member)
Liliana Hentosh is a Candidate of Historical Sciences and Senior Research Fellow at the Ivan Franko Lviv National University’s Institute of Historical Research, as well as Academic secretary of the editorial board of the scholarly journal Ukraina Moderna. She is the author of several dozen articles that have appeared in Ukrainian, Polish, English and German about the history of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches and interfaith relations in the first half of the 20th century. Hentosh also penned the 2006 monograph on the “Eastern policy” of the Vatican, The Vatican and the Challenges of Modernity: Eastern European Policy of Pope Benedict XV and the Ukrainian-Polish Conflict in Galicia (1914-1923). For many years she has researched the life and work of Andrei Sheptytsky, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. She authored a monograph on Sheptytsky’s activities in the interwar period Andrei Sheptytsky, 1923-1939: A Test of Ideals (2015), and is currently working on a book about Metropolitan Sheptytsky during World War II, which will include a section on Sheptytsky and the Holocaust. In 2021, a popular work about Metropolitan Sheptytsky, El Metropolita Andrey Sheptytsky, paginas de su vida (1985-1944), will be published in Spanish. She teaches summer school at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University about the socio-political thought of Metropolitan Sheptytsky, as well as his financial and economic activities.
Marko Robert Stech (Canada, Jury Member)
Marko Robert Stech is a writer, literary scholar, and specialist in the history of culture. He holds a PhD in Slavic Studies and Master of Applied Science (engineering) from the University of Toronto. He works at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (University of Alberta‒University of Toronto). He is Executive Director of CIUS Press and Project Manager of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Hrushevsky Translation Project. He is the author of the award-winning novel Voice (Holos), the book of essays Essays in Search of Sources (Eseistyka i poshukakh dzherel), an experimental novel The Undying (Nevmyrushchi), and numerous essays. He is the compiler of the literary legacies of Ihor Kostetsky, Iurii Kosach, and Emma Andiievska; and a compiler and editor of an anthology of Ukrainian short prose translated into Czech. Stech is the author and producer of over 100 episodes of the Ochyma Kultury («Очима культури») TV series on Kontakt TV (OMNI TV, Canada). His writings have been awarded the Koshelivets International Literary Prize in 2008 (Israel), the Gogol International Literary Prize in 2009 (Ukraine), and the Hlodoskyi skarb International Prize in 2014 (Ukraine).
