Ghosts in a Photograph

Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle

by Myrna Kostash

An award-winning nonfiction author delves into her family’s various and complicated paths from Galicia (Ukraine) to Alberta.

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 workingclass Edmontonians. Working within the gaps in history—including the unsolved murder in Ukraine of her great-uncle—Kostash uses her remarkable acumen as a writer and researcher to craft a probable narrative 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.

Trade Paperback / Oct. 1, 2022 ISBN 10: 1-77439-057-4

ISBN 13: 978-177439-057-3

BISAC 1: BIO026000 BISAC 2: BIO002000 BISAC 3: BIO006000 246 pp / 6” x 9” / $24.95 cdn $19.95 usd

“Kostash writes with a poetic grace that vividly captures the look, feel, and smell of her subjects”

~ Maclean’s, praise for No Kidding: Inside the Life of Teenage Girls

About The Author

Myrna Kostash’s most recent books are Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium and The Seven Oaks Reader. Her essays and creative nonfiction have been widely anthologized. She is a recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award for A Life of Writing. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

ADDITIONAL SALES POINTS

• Author is an important Western Canadian nonfiction writer and figure of letters who has won many awards and received many accolades, including the Writers’ Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award for A Life of Writing. • Book will appeal to those who enjoy family chronicles and labour history and includes an element of true crime.

MARKETING PLAN

• International press release mailout. • Digital ARC available. • Announcement of book’s release by email newsletter and on the NeWest Press Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. • Podcast/reading interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio. • Press releases and review mailouts to various CBC outlets across the nation, both radio and television. • Submit to all eligible awards. • Ads in Brick, Glass Buffalo, Prairie Books NOW, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, Read Alberta Books (Alberta Views), subTerrain, and the ULS Super Forthcoming Catalogue. • Online Zoom launch, and eventual in-person launches in Edmonton and Calgary.

MARKETS

• National trade: family memoir • US and UK trade: family memoir • Edmonton, AB / Western Ukraine

COMPARISON TITLES

• White Coal City: A Memoir of Place and Family by Robert Boschman (978-0-889777-96-5, University of Regina Press, 2021) • Euclid’s Orchard and Other Essays by Theresa Kishkan (978-1-896949-63-5, Mother Tongue, 2017) • Common People: The History of an English Family by Alison Light (978-0-141039-86-2, Fig Tree / Penguin, 2015)