2020 Word Awards Winner
This premier national event honours Canadian writers who are Christian, presenting awards for outstanding career achievement, and for the best novels, non-fiction books.
2019 Philipovna – Daughter of Sorrow
Philipovna: Daughter of Sorrow is a creative non-fiction based on the author’s mother’s surviving the Holodomor [the Ukrainian starvation] in the early 1930s. It is the story of an orphan who goes to live with her aunt in a rural village in the Ukrainian countryside. The aunt swears on her dead sister’s Bible that Vera Philipovna will survive no matter what might befall the family. No one foresees the horrors that they will have to face between the fall of 1930 and the spring of 1933. In the end, out of a healthy extended family, only Philipovna, a cousin and the aunt survive. The acts of real savagery that are perpetrated on the village are unflinchingly narrated by a pre-pubescent girl, who also gives us a good grasp of the beauty and richness of the Ukrainian culture with its superstitions, customs and celebrations. From the author: “The story is one of resilience and survival. It is my attempt to restore the voice of a generation that has been silenced and buried. It is a conflation of my mother’s stories, years of detailed research and my own insight of a child having to face adult challenges long before she is ready.”
Coffee Cake, 2019
Coffee Cake is a short story published in the Nashwaak Review 2019. In this story, Lucy’s “blind” world intersects with the world of Walter, the local homeless man. Through a random act of kindness, Lucy learns that the two of them have more in common than she could possibly imagine and that there is a possibility that she might call him “friend”.
https://www.stu.ca/english/the-nashwaak-review/volumesissues/nashwaak-review
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Seven Silver Dollars, 2018
Seven Silver Dollars is a story within the anthology Christmas with Hot Apple Cider. Blind Larysa is taken to her parents’ factory Christmas party. She is reluctant to go because she knows it will be difficult for her as she feels unaccepted. In this story, Larysa finds a way to negotiate her position and to move toward acceptance by her community and approval from her father.
Christmas with Hot Apple Cider is now available. Please visit Hot Apple Cider Books for more details.
My Mother’s Hands, 2015.
Finalist in The Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers.
PDF: pamela van der woude’s “bird” – The Writers’ Union of Canada
Announcing the 2015 Short Prose Competition winners
God So Loved The World, 2015.
Presbycan Daily Devotional Website.
God So Loved The World, PresbyCan Daily Devotional
Recipient of Ontario Arts Council grant, The Writers’ Works in Progress, October 2012.
PDF: OAC 2012-2013 Grants Listing – Ontario Arts Council
A Gift of Dignity, Toronto the Good, the Bad and the Ugly Series, 28 April 2012.
Toronto Reference Library. Participated as a paid author.
Toronto the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Diaspora Dialogues
Good-Night, Voices 2012.
The Toronto Writer’s Co-op Anthology.
A Gift of Dignity, 2011.
Diaspora Dialogues Finalist. Story published on the web. Mentored by Andrew Pyper.
Diaspora Dialogues’ 2011 Writers and Mentors, Open Book: Toronto
Ice Cream, Voices 2011.
The Toronto Writer’s Co-op Anthology.
Neighbours, Friends & Families Disability Strategy, a report for Centre for Research & Education on Violence against Women & Children, 2011.
Neighbours, Friends & Families Disability Strategy Report
Planting Seeds, 2011.
The Canadian Blind Monitor, Volume 31, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians.
Planting Seeds | Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Getting There: Past and Present, 2010.
The Canadian Blind Monitor, Volume 30, Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians.
Getting There – Past and Present | Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
I Will Praise Thee, Presbyterian Church in Canada Daily Devotional Website, October 2008.
I Will Praise Thee, PresbyCan Daily Devotional
The Christmas Bird, 2008.
Finalist in The Writers Union of Canada Postcard Story Competition.
2008 Postcard Story Competition Winner, The Writers’ Union of Canada
Shades of Blue, 2005.
Main Street, McMaster University.
Storyteller, 1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling.
Regularly featured from 2010 to 2016.
Storyteller at Toronto Story Festival, 2016.
Harbourfront Centre Events, Traveling Blind