This annual interdisciplinary celebration of a work of Canadian literature reaches into classrooms across the university.
Students and faculty members explore a book written by a Canadian author through workshops, readings, a Wall of Fame reception, a student contest and more. Events typically include opportunities for students to engage with the author, including through classroom visits.
Since its inception in 1997, the Book of the Year program has been guided by a committee of faculty, staff and students. After robust deliberations and discussion, the committee recommends a title for the MacEwan Book of the Year to the provost & vice-president, Academic.
Meet Maria Reva
Maria Reva writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of Good Citizens Need Not Fear, set in an apartment block in Ukraine, as well as the novel Endling (longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, winner of the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Best American Short Stories and elsewhere.
Maria’s opera libretti have been commissioned by organizations including City Opera Vancouver, Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Opera Roadshow, Ad Astra Music Festival (Russell, Kansas), Musique 3 Femmes, and most recently, Opéra de Montréal. Her musical works have been performed at venues such as Théâtre Maisonneuve in Montréal and Berlin’s ufaFabrik.
About the novel
In Ukraine in 2022, Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests, trying and failing to breed rare snails. To fund her work, she entertains Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours, believing they’ll find docile wives. Nastia and Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator. Together, the three women embark on the journey of a lifetime with a truckful of kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-his-kind snail—that is, until Russia invades.
A darkly comic novel, Endling draws on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, she probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? Once shattered, can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored?
Endling is a metafictional tour de force, weaving love, loss, humor and devastation in a story only this author can tell.
Events
You can add participation in event(s) to your Student Experience Record.
Have you read a great book recently? Nominate your choice for the next MacEwan Book of the Year.
