Category: 2023

Lisa Shymko holds an M.A. in Political Science (University of Toronto) and a Four-year Honours B.A. with a Specialist in Canadian constitutional law and Soviet history and a Double Minor in Economics and Slavic Studies (University of St. Michael’s College – University of Toronto).

Ms. Shymko brings unique insight into all aspects of communications, having spent decades in the media, nongovernmental, and financial services sectors.

Her news articles and opinion pieces on global security issues have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The American Spectator, Maclean’s magazine, and Ukraine’s daily newspaper, The Day (Hazeta Den’).

Ms. Shymko served as a media advisor to Ukraine’s first ambassador to Canada— former Soviet dissident Levko Lukianenko — writing several editorials for the ambassador, including a 1993 op-ed for the Globe and Mail.

Lisa Shymko was appointed by the City of Toronto to serve on the Toronto Public Library Board, and was later elected Chair of its Services, Planning and Capital Committee. She has managed two international book exhibitions in the House of Commons in Ottawa and the National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine in Kyiv.

Ms. Shymko managed several international development projects, including the Ukraine-Canada Journalists Exchange Program for the International Renaissance Foundation of the Soros Foundations Network.

She was the founding Director of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Resource Centre at the National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine in Kyiv, established by Canadian Friends of Ukraine in cooperation with the Government of Canada.

At the invitation of the Government of Canada, she has testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and collaborated on the drafting of historic Canadian legislation recognizing Ukraine’s Stalin-era famine as genocide, for which her efforts were officially acknowledged in the House of Commons in 2008. Between 2010–2015, she was part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s delegation on three official visits to Ukraine.

As Director of Corporate Communications for BCU Financial Group, she spearheaded the creation of Forum TV — a community-based television program supported by BCU Foundation and broadcast nationally on Rogers-OMNI, where she served as Supervising Director (2012–2017).

Ms. Shymko has chaired and held various board positions in several nongovernmental organizations, including the Ukraine Support Fund, BCU Foundation, and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. In 2024, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the NATO Association of Canada.

As a member of the Canada Ukraine Foundation’s advisory committee for the Holodomor National Awareness Tour, she chaired the Canadian film premiere of Hunger for Truth: The Rhea Clyman Story (2018) and edited the French translation of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory’s publication, entitled L’Holodomor: Génocide du Peuple Ukrainien, produced by the Canada Ukraine Foundation (2020).

Ms. Shymko is past Chair of Guardian Angels Ukraine, a veteran’s rehabilitation project which operated in Ukraine under the auspices of the LUCW, in cooperation with NATO’s Medical Rehabilitation Trust Fund (2014–2017).

She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the 2021 Virtual NGO Forum of the 65th Session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women and the NATO Association of Canada conference, Crisis Response: Is Canada Prepared? — Unrest on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Ukraine, Baltic States, Russia (2017).

Lisa Shymko is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including: The Presidential Order of Merit (2009, Ukraine); Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012, Canada); The Medal of Honour of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (2017).

Jurij Darewych is a founding member and Past President of Canadian Friends of Ukraine, Past President of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC), past Chair of the Human Rights Commission of the Ukrainian World Congress, and a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

He was part of the research and creative team that spearheaded the production of the Ukrainian diaspora’s most successful historical documentary — the award-winning film, “Harvest of Despair”, the first documentary focusing on Stalin’s state-sponsored famine of the Ukrainian people.

Jurij Darewych also served as member of the Canadian-based script-writing committee for the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre’s World War Two documentary, “Between Hitler and Stalin: Ukraine in World War II— The Untold Story”.  

In 2014, Jurij Darewych was chosen by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to convene and direct a special Advisory and Coordinating Committee to provide advice and support to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights on academic research on Ukrainian issues.

Jurij Darewych has served as director of numerous non-governmental organizations, including the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation in support of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

Jurij Darewych is currently President of COSBILD, a Ukrainian-Canadian non-profit that supports historically significant publications and academic scholarship programs considered important to the global Ukrainian community.  

Jurij Darewych is also the recipient of the 2013 Ukrainian Canadian Congress’ Shevchenko Medal Award for Community Development. 

Jurij Darewych studied physics and mathematics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. He obtained an M. Sc. in physics from the University of Manitoba and a Ph. D. from the University of Alberta.  In 1967 he obtained a position of professor in the Department of Physics at York University in Toronto, where he taught physics and mathematics and conducted research in theoretical physics.  Professor Darewych is the recipient of several awards, including the President’s University-Wide Teaching Award at York University, honoring those who, through innovation and commitment, have significantly enhanced the quality of learning.

Dr. Darewych is the author of over 120 refereed papers on physics in Canadian, US and European journals of physics, and was a visiting professor at the Universities of Florida, Paris, Rome and London (UK), as well as various Physics Research Institutes in the US and Europe. He has supervised 14 M. Sc. and 12 Ph. D. students in physics and 7 Postdoctoral Fellows at York University where he is currently a Professor Emeritus.

Nadia Gereliouk holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. Nadia’s interests complement the variety of perspectives shared by the jury vis-à-vis new publications on Ukrainian themes.

Her research interests include contemporary feminist Ukrainian literature, autobiography studies, the politics of memory, the diaspora experience, and migration studies.

She has taught Ukrainian language courses at several Canadian institutions, including the Slavic Languages Department at the University of Toronto. In 2022, her list of books for readers who seek a better understanding of Ukraine, beyond the headlines, was published by The Globe and Mail.

In addition to serving on the board of BCU Foundation, Nadia also serves on the boards of several other non-governmental organizations, including the Toronto Ukrainian School Board, contributing to its ongoing curriculum development, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress – Toronto Branch, the League of Ukrainian Canadians, and the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada.

Among the charitable projects where Nadia serves as a board member is the Saskatoon-based non-for-profit Stream of Hopes Aid for Ukraine Inc., whose activities help disadvantaged children in Ukraine

Alexander J. Motyl is a painter, writer, and professor. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008 and 2013, he is the author of eleven novels and a collection of poetry. His artwork has been shown in solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, Westport, and Toronto and is part of the permanent collection of the Ukrainian Museum in New York and the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Winnipeg. He has done performances of his fiction at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. 

Motyl earned his PhD from Columbia University where he has lectured. He has also taught at Lehigh University, the Kyiv-Mohyla University, and Harvard University. He currently teaches political science at Rutgers University-Newark and the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. He frequently contributes opinion columns in such publications as Foreign Policy, 19FortyFive, and the Kyiv Post.

He is the author of eight academic books and numerous articles. He is the 2019 Laureate of the Omelian and Tatiana Antonovych Foundation. According to Academic Influence, Motyl was ranked sixth among the “Top Ten Most Influential Political Scientists Today.”  

Marko Robert Stech is a writer, literary scholar, and specialist in the history of culture.

He holds a PhD in Slavic Studies and a MASc in Engineering from the University of Toronto.

He holds several positions at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) of the University of Alberta and University of Toronto: director of CIUS Press and Scholarly Publications, overseeing the Press, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies and Ukraina Moderna; and project manager of the Hrushevsky Translation Project.

His novel, The Voice («Голос»), won the 2009 Mykola Gogol International Prize for Literature. He is the author of  Essays in Search of Sources («Есеїстика у пошуках джерел»), the experimental novel The Undying («Невмирущі»), and numerous other 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 in Czech translations.

He has written and produced over 100 episodes of the «Очима культури» TV series on Kontakt TV (OMNI TV, Canada). His writings have received several awards of recognition. He was 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).

The Torture Camp on Paradise Street

Stanislav Aseyev – Author
Zenia Tompkins, Nina Murray – Translators

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute – Publisher

“In recognition of this personal memoir that not only testifies to the human rights violations committed by the Russian Federation, but also exposes the truth behind the existence of unofficial prisons, illegal deprivation of liberty, and torture carried out by the occupier in the city of Donetsk.”

The book chronicles journalist Stanislav Aseyev’s first-hand experience in a modern-day concentration camp overseen by the Federal Security Bureau of the Russian Federation (FSB). In the two years of his illegal imprisonment in an industrial factory called Izoliatsia, Aseyev and his fellow inmates have endured horrific psychological and physical abuse, torture, denigration, endless fear, and agony. This is a story of an individual who is vulnerable to the arbitrariness of, first and foremost, armed criminals, a story of survival in a place where all mechanisms of civilized humanity no longer function, and a story of hope to remain human in the most inhuman conditions. The captivity forever altered the author’s outlook on life, yet it did not leave him helpless or defeated.

Awards achieve

The Extraordinary Lives of Ukrainian Canadian Women:
Oral Histories of the Twentieth Century

Iroida Wynnyckyj – Editor
Marta Olynyk – Translator

Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press – Publisher

“Recognized for its archival value in providing historians with multigenerational testimonies of Ukrainian Canadian women whose personal stories were shaped by the tumultuous events of two world wars.”

This collection of life stories recounted by ten Ukrainian Canadian women who lived through the turbulence of the First World War and horrors of the Second World War, later settling in Canada, provides insight into the plight of a stateless people caught between two totalitarian regimes.

Its value to historians, scholars, and researchers lies in the human dimension of these first-hand accounts, with all their emotions, deep-seated memories, and historical biases. It is a snapshot into the past and a reminder of how far Eastern and Central European communities have come to heal the deep wounds of war. And in many ways, the testimonies are a lesson in how powerlessness, disaffection, and the backdrop of war can breed prejudice, conflict, and human tragedy, while at the same time underscoring the often-elusive acts of human decency and triumph of hope.

Awards Archive

The Voices of Babyn Yar

Marianna Kiyanovska – Author
Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky – Translators

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute – Publisher

“In recognition of its masterful use of poetry to convey the unspeakable crimes committed at Babyn Yar, using a first-person perspective of Jewish voices to raise painful questions related to memory and responsibility.”

As one reviewer wrote, Babyn Yar is a part of Ukrainian history regardless of whether ethnic Ukrainians are buried there or not. Victims and their pain have no nationality—the same way crimes don’t have one. In this sense, The Voices of Babyn Yar is an attempt to hear these voices and comprehend the future through the past —today’s war through the previous war. The poems are an attempt to overcome hate speech by creating a supra-national language of the victim. 

Recently, the Polish translation of Voices of Babyn Yar earned author Marianna Kiyanovska the European Poet of Freedom Literary Award. It is the English translation of this moving collection of poems that earned the book its Peterson Literary Fund 2023 Translated Book Award.

Awards Archive

2023 Grand Prix for Excellence in Translation

Ukrayna: Bir Tarihsel Atlas

Paul Robert Magocsi – Author
Maryna Kravets, Victor Ostapchuk, Murat Yaşar – Translators

VakifBank Kültür Yayinlari (Türkiye) – Publisher

Paul Robert Magocsi / author

“The Grand Prix is given in recognition of this book’s importance in making Robert Magocsi’s comprehensive history of Ukraine accessible to a Turkish-speaking audience, thanks to its well-crafted translation.”

Ukraine is Europe’s second-largest country. This lavishly illustrated volume provides a concise and easy-to-read historical survey of Ukraine from earliest times to the present. Each of the book’s forty-six chapters is framed by a historical map, which graphically depicts the key elements of the chronological period or theme being discussed. In addition, the entire text is accompanied by sixteen statistical tables and over 300 historic photographs, line drawings, portraits, and reproductions of books and art works, which bring the rich past of Ukraine to life. 

This book emphasizes the multicultural nature of Ukraine throughout its history. While ethnic Ukrainians figure prominently, author Paul Robert Magocsi, (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto) also deals with the many other peoples who live or who have lived within the borders of present-day Ukraine: Poles, Russians, Jews, Crimean Tartars, Germans (including Mennonites), and Greeks, among others. 

Ukraine: An Illustrated History is not only an indispensable resource for students and specialists in the European area and Slavic studies, it offers information for the media, businesspersons, government officials, as well as general readers interested in having easy access to fact-based information about historic political, economic, and cultural developments in Ukraine. 

And now it is available to a Turkish audience of readers.

Translators 

Awards Archive

Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love

Volodymyr Rafeyenko – Author
Mark Andryczyk – Translator

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute – Publisher

“In recognition of this book’s contribution to important processes of change in the way writers approach language in contemporary Ukrainian literature.”

In 2014, a well-known award-winning Russian-language writer from the Ukrainian city of Donetsk chose to escape his hometown because he did not want to live under Russian occupation. In 2019, displaced in Kyiv, he published his novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, which was his first ever literary work written in Ukrainian. Volodymyr Rafeyenko now insists that he will not go back to writing in Russian, which he once considered his native language. Rafeyenko represents a broader trend among Russian-language writers in Ukraine who, as a matter of principle, have switched to writing in Ukrainian. Indeed, they have changed not only their medium of communication, but their entire consciousness and world view.

Awards archive