Shortlist for the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter Prize announced

The 2025 “Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize” has announced its shortlist of nominees.

The prize is aimed at acknowledging the shared experiences of Ukrainians and Jews throughout the centuries, as conveyed through the printed word. 

The shortlist consists of five books in the “fiction” category released in 2023–2024:

• Sonya Kapinus, White Rabbits (Kyiv: Publishing House ORLANDO, 2024)
• Mia Marchenko, Kateryna Pekur, Children of the Burning Time (Kharkiv: Readberry, 2024)
• Isaac Leib Peretz, Hasidic (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2024)
• Khrystyna Semeryn (Editor), Centuries of Presence: The Jewish World in Ukrainian Short Fiction of the 1880s–1930s (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2024)
• Eli Schechtman, Ringen oyf der Neshome (Rings on the Soul) (Lviv: Apriori Publishing House, 2023)

The winner receives 6000 Euros, with the author/s receiving 4000 Euros and the publisher 2000 Euros. Four  incentive awards will receive 250 Euros each.

The international jury for the 2025 Encounter prize is composed of:

• Ostap Slyvynsky (Ukraine/Jury Head)
  Ostap Slyvynsky is a celebrated Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist, and scholar. He has authored five books of poetry, including Winter King (2018, and A Dictionary of War (2023), a documentary book based on testimonies of witnesses of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
• Maria Genkin (United States/Jury Member)
  An avid reader, Genkin spearheaded Razom Literature, a program aimed at enhancing the visibility of Ukrainian literature in the English-speaking world by cultivating relationships with publishers, translators, booksellers, and readers. Genkin regularly moderates book events and lives in New York City with her family.
• Volodymyr Yeshkilev (Ukraine/Jury Member)
  Volodymyr Yeshkilev is a well-known Ukrainian prose writer, screenwriter, playwright, and publicist. Among Yeshkilev’s 17 published novels are the conspiracy saga, “Situation ‘Zero’”; a trilogy about the times of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and the Ruin, “Union”, “Cain”, “Malh”; and the story of the young years of Hryhorii Skovoroda, “Androgyn” (All Corners of the Triangle).

“Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize” was established by the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter Foundation with the support of the NGO “Forum of Publishers.” Since 2020, “Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize” has been awarded for the best work that promotes Ukrainian-Jewish understanding and supports Ukraine’s development as a multi-ethnic society, in two categories: fiction and non-fiction.

As reported earlier, the prize was first awarded in 2020 in the fiction category to Vasyl Makhno for his novel “The Eternal Calendar.” In 2021, the winner was Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s “The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew,” and in 2022, the award was not presented due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. In 2023, the winner was Sofia Andrukhovych for her novel “Amadoka,” and in 2024, Yuriy Skira for his novel “Solid: The Life-Saving Footwear Factory.”

RELATED: Yuriy Skira talks about Lviv’s “life-saving factory” during the Holocaust

Images: Prize website

Copy editing: Joy Tataryn