Vancouver author Maria Reva's Good Citizens Need Not Fear wins $25K Kobzar Book Award

Maria Reva's fiction novel Good Citizens Need Not Fear has won the 2022 Kobzar Book Award, a biennial award that gives $25,000 to an outstanding book about the Ukrainian Canadian experience.

Inspired by her family's own experiences in Ukraine, Good Citizens Need Not Fear is Reva's first book. Featuring a fiery "orphan turned beauty pageant-crasher" named Zaya, the novel weaves stories from the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

• Read an excerpt from Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva

The graphic novel Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire by Canadian author Dr. Kassandra Luciuk and illustrated by nicole marie burton was also shortlisted for the prize, alongside the poetry collection, Fields of Light and Stone by Manitoba author Angeline Schellenberg.

LISTEN | Maria Reva on The Next Chapter:

The Next Chapter4:11Maria Reva on Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Maria Reva on her collection of short stories Good Citizens Need Not Fear, which won the $25,000 2022 Kobzar Book Award.

Good Citizens Need Not Fear was also shortlisted for the shortlisted for the 2020 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In 2018, Reva won the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for emerging writers for her short story The Ermine Coat, which appears in Good Citizens Need Not Fear. 

Originally from Vancouver, Reva now lives in Texas.