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Book Cover for: Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronical, Myrna Kostash

Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronical

Myrna Kostash

In Ghosts in a Photograph, award-winning nonfiction writer Myrna Kostash delves into the lives of her grandparents, all of whom moved from Galicia, now present-day Ukraine, to Alberta at the turn of the twentieth century. Discovering a packet of family mementos, Kostash begins questioning what she knows about her extended families' pasts and whose narrative is allowed to prevail in Canada.

This memoir, however, is not just a personal story, but a public one of immigration, partisan allegiance, and the stark differences in how two sets of families survive in a new country: one as homesteaders, the other as working-class Edmontonians. Working within the gaps in history--including the unsolved murder in Ukraine of her great uncle--Kostash uses her remarkable acumen as writer and researcher to interrogate the idea of straightforward and singular-voiced pasts and the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from.

Rich in detail and propelled by vital curiosity, Ghosts in a Photograph is a determined, compelling, and multifaceted family chronicle.

Book Details

  • Publisher: NeWest Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 1st, 2022
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 5.91in - 0.79in - 0.92lb
  • EAN: 9781774390573
  • Categories: MemoirsCultural & RegionalHistorical

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About the Author

Kostash, Myrna: -

Born and raised in Edmonton, Myrna Kostash is the author of the classic All of Baba's Children, No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls, winner of the Alberta Culture and Writers' Guild of Alberta prize for Best Non-Fiction, and Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium, which received the 2010 City of Edmonton Book Prize, the Writers' Guild of Alberta Wilfred Eggleston Award for Best Nonfiction, and was shortlisted for the 2011 Runcimann Award (UK). Her other titles include The Doomed Bridegroom: A Memoir, Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe, and her edited collections Reading the River: A Traveller's Companion to the North Saskatchewan River, The Frog Lake Reader, and The Seven Oaks Reader. Kostash, who served as Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada, has published widely in numerous magazines and lectured across Canada and Europe. In 2010, she was awarded the Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for a Life of Writing.

More books by Myrna Kostash

Book Cover for: All of Baba's Children, Myrna Kostash
Book Cover for: Writing Ukraine, Myrna Kostash
Book Cover for: Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium, Myrna Kostash
Book Cover for: The Doomed Bridegroom, Myrna Kostash

Praise for this book

Praise for Myrna Kostash:

All of Baba's Children


"For a work of non-fiction to become a classic means that it has made a significant contribution to a particular culture by creating a breakthrough in its consciousness and by heralding a new stage in its evolution. All of Baba's Children achieved this by its vibrant, radical, and revisionist perspective on multiculturalism. . . . All of Baba's Children has become a manifesto that has yet to be surpassed."


- George Melnyk

i>The Doomed Bridegroom


"Kostash has invented a rich literary genre: the erotic-political memoir. With grace, intelligence, knowledge and humour, Kostash leads us through her romantic odyssey, a voyage that records her own sentimental education, but also major events of this waning century's political history."


- Alberto Manguel, The Globe and Mail

No Kidding: Inside the Life of Teenage Girls


"Kostash writes with a poetic grace that vividly captures the look, feel, and smell of her subjects.the book goes beyond the numbers to bring its young women to life. No Kidding should join Dr Spock on every parent's bookshelf."


- Maclean's