Lysenko, Vera

Lysenko, Vera (Лисенко, Віра; pseud of Vera Lesik, who also wrote under the name of Luba Novack), b 7 August 1910 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, d 20 October 1975 in Toronto, Ontario. Writer; daughter of Ukrainian immigrants from Kyiv gubernia. Lysenko graduated from the University of Manitoba (BA, 1930). She moved to eastern Canada in 1936 and worked for Magazine Digest in Toronto and for the Windsor Star. During and immediately after the Second World War she researched and wrote Men in Sheepskin Coats: A Study in Assimilation (1947), a popular examination of Ukrainian-Canadian life from the perspective of the pro-communist Association of United Ukrainian Canadians. She also wrote two novels, Yellow Boots (1954, republished 1992), the story of a Ukrainian-Canadian girl who sacrifices everything for material success, and Westerly Wild (1956), a melodramatic tale of life in rural western Canada during the 1930s. She did not publish after 1956.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]