Award-winning children's author coming to Saskatchewan: UCC-SPC's Literatoura 2007

November 22, 2007 (updated) -- Marsha Skrypuch will be conducting public book presentations and signings in Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert for her latest release Dear Canada: Prisoners in a Promised Land -- The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk.

Post event article and photos

It is the heart-wrenching story of one girl’s experience at a Ukrainian internment camp in Quebec during World War I.

Poster/details for Regina event November 27

Poster/details for Saskatoon event November 28

Poster/details for Prince Albert event November 29

Anya’s family emigrates from Ukraine hoping for a fresh start and a new life in Canada. Soon after they cram into a tiny apartment in Montreal, WWI is declared. Because their district was annexed by Austria – now at war with the Commonwealth – many Ukrainians in Canada are declared “enemy aliens” and sent to internment camps. Anya and her family are shipped off to the Spirit Lake Camp, in the remote wilderness of Quebec. Though conditions are brutal, at least Anya is at a camp that houses entire families together, and even in this barbed-wire world, she is able to make new friends and bring some happiness to the people around her.

Author Marsha Skrypuch, whose own grandfather was interned during WWI at Jasper Internment Camp in Alberta, traveled to Spirit Lake during her research for the book. “When we got to the cemetery, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Imagine seeing a series of crosses, all grown over with brush and abandoned, and knowing that the real person you based a character on had a little sister buried there. That real girl was Mary Manko. She was only six- years-old when she and her family were taken from their Montreal home and sent to Spirit Lake Internment Camp. Her two-year-old sister Carolka died at the camp.” explains Skrypuch.

Mary Manko was the last known survivor of Canada’s first national internment operations from 1914-1920. Mary died on July 15th, 2007 at the age of 98. For years, Mary served as the honourary chairwoman of the National Redress Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. She was committed to ensuring that what happened to her and thousands of other innocent people would be remembered. Mary’s voice and experiences will resonate through the diary entries of Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land.

Marsha Skrypuch has become the pre-eminent children’s writer on Canadian-Ukrainian history. She has won numerous awards and nominations for her books, including six CCBC’s Our Choice Awards and the CLA 2007 Children's Book of the Year nomination for Aram's Choice. Her books have been nominated for the Saskatchewan’s Snow Willow Award, the Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, the Rocky Mountain Book Award, the BC Stellar Award, the Ontario Red Maple Award and the Ontario Silver Birch Express Award. Marsha was named a Canadian Ukrainian Woman of Influence by the World Congress of Ukrainian Women's Organizations in 2006. She was also nominated for the W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize for her body of work and mentorship of other writers. Her most recent novels are Nobody’s Child and Aram’s Choice, and she has edited a new anthology of Ukrainian memoirs, called Kobzar's Children.

Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land
The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk
Written by Marsha Skrypuch
ISBN-10: 0-439-95692-7/ISBN-13: 978-0-439-95692-5
Ages 8-12/ $14.99 hardcover/ October 2007

-- based on Scholastic Canada media release