Shandi Mitchell holding the Kobzar Literary Award statue
(Photo: James Di Donato)

Nova Scotian filmmaker Shandi Mitchell has won the Kobzar Literary Award for her 2009 debut novel, Under This Broken Sky (Penguin Canada).

The biannual $25,000 prize “ Mitchell receives $20,000 and $5,000 goes to her publisher “ recognizes “outstanding contributions to Canadian literary arts through an author’s presentation of a Canadian Ukrainian theme,” and is open to fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and YA literature.

Jurors Denise Chong, Randall Maggs, Nino Ricci, and M.G. Vassanji called Under This Broken Sky a compelling and poignant narrative that honours the ancestry of many Canadian Ukrainians who worked for a better life during the depression era.”

The other finalists for the award were: Larissa Andrusyshyn, Mammoth (DC Books); Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter (University of Alberta Press); Myroslav Shkandrij, Jews in Ukrainian Literature (Yale University Press); and Rhea Tregebov, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell (Coteau Books).