7 ways winning a CBC Literary Prize will change your life
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open for submissions between Jan. 1 and March 1
Do you dream of making it big as a writer? If so, you should take the plunge and enter the CBC Literary Prizes! Here are seven great reasons why.
You can submit original, unpublished nonfiction that is up to 2,000 words. There is no minimum word requirement. Nonfiction includes memoir, biography, humour writing, essay (including personal essay), travel writing and feature articles.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.
The 2024 prize is open for submissions until March 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET (1:59 p.m. PT).
Here are seven great ways winning will change your life.
1. You get front page exposure
Imagine waking up one morning to see your photo on the front page of the Arts section of your city's daily newspaper. Some of our former laureates had never been interviewed before winning, and then suddenly they have a publicist booking them back-to-back interviews.
2. You hear yourself on CBC Radio
Past winners have been featured on CBC Radio shows like As It Happens. Maybe you'll be interviewed between literary heavyweights like George Elliott Clarke and Margaret Atwood. Or maybe you'll get to read your story on air for a national audience.
3. Many (many) people will read your work
CBC Books publishes the five shortlisted entries right here for everyone to read, along with a profile of all the longlisted writers. Get ready for online attention!
4. The publishing industry comes knocking
Publishers and agents are always looking to discover the next big thing. David Huebert won the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize for Enigma, and went on to publish the short story collection Peninsula Sinking. Other recent CBC Literary Prize winners who have published books include Sadiqa de Meijer, Claire Battershill, Sarah de Leeuw and David Martin.
5. You get asked out a lot more
After winning, our former winners report receiving requests to attend festivals, read at public events and sit on competition juries. Some have also been approached to include their work in anthologies.
6. You're finally able to finish that project
One of the great things about winning $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts is the freedom it gives you to work on the projects you feel you should be working on. And with the writing residency, you will have even more creative time at your disposal. Our 2012 winner, Daniel Sarah Karasik, reported that during their residency they were able to make the final edits to their debut poetry collection and they completed a new draft of a play.
7. You'll call yourself a "writer"
One of the things we heard most when asking our former winners what winning did for their writing careers was that they finally felt comfortable calling themselves writers. "The most exciting part was the internal shift," wrote Alison Pick, who won the CBC Poetry Prize in 2005, "the permission to actually call myself a writer, and to devote myself to it completely. I never looked back."
