Kovaliv, Stepan

Kovaliv, Stepan (Ковалів, Степан; pseud: Stefan Piatka), b 25 December 1848 in Bronytsia, Sambir circle, Galicia, d 26 June 1920 in Boryslav, Galicia. Populist writer and teacher. A graduate of a teachers' seminary in Lviv, from 1879 he taught in Boryslav. He first published in 1881. Beginning in 1891, 14 of his short story collections appeared during his lifetime. Some—eg, Charodiina skrypka (The Magic Violin, 1910) and V ostannii lavtsi (In the Last Row of Desks, 1911)—were written for children. Many of his stories, particularly those in the collections Hromads'ki promyslovtsi (Community Industrialists, 1899) and Obrazky z halyts'koï Kaliforniï (Pictures from Galician California, 1913), depict the lives of the impoverished Galician peasantry and the exploited workers of Boryslav. An edition of his complete works appeared in 1958. Ivan Franko had an important influence on his writing.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]