Juror Conor Kerr thinks you should submit to the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize
You could win $6,000, a writing residency and have your work published
Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who hails from many prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the poetry collection Old Gods and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award and won the ReLit award the same year.
Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta. Previously, Kerr was a reader for the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize. He also made the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.
Kerr's most recent novel Prairie Edge is on the shortlist for the 2024 Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In Prairie Edge, Isidore "Ezzy" Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey is cynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Grey is simply devoted to his distant cousin.
So when Grey concocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzy is along for the ride — one that has devastating, fatal consequences.
Kerr was announced as a juror for the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize alongside Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie.
The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Nov. 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET. You can submit original, unpublished fiction that is up to 2,500 words in length.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books.
Kerr spoke with Radio Active host Jessica Ng about his latest book Prairie Edge and what he will be looking for in a great short story entry.
In your opinion, what are the qualities of a short story that makes it a winning short story?
I really look at ones that bring you right into the action, especially in a short story. You got 2,500 words for this contest. You got to get right into it and you got to bring some characters to the page that are really vivid and show us what it means.
Living in 2024, the hopes and dreams and trials and tribulations, what does that look like as they move through the day-to-day? I feel people always look for grandiose moments to bring to the story, but at the same time, just capturing the contemporary existence is often enough of a story when you can bring us through a character transformation or a narrative transformation.
How do you do that with word utility?
Oh, it's tough. Editing. Editing and thinking about the way that you're approaching the page. With a short story of 2,500 words, think about "is this dialogue adding to it? Do I really need to describe the sunset or do people just understand what a sunset kind of looks like?" I often say to the students I teach: you can take for granted that the reader is smart enough to understand certain things and you don't need to over explain it to them. And so a good way of doing that is often rereading your work and then being like "oh, wait a second, that doesn't actually read that well on the page. Or maybe I am over explaining this."
You were longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize back in 2021, then you're a reader for that same prize in 2022. What can prizes like the CBC Short Story Prize actually do for aspiring authors?
It's a great way of validating your voice and your own writing, especially if you're just starting out. It's a good way of building that confidence. I'd had a couple books [published], but I was working on another poetry collection. And you get to that space where you're like, "Is anyone going to read this? Is it really cool that I'm writing emo-cowboy poetry in 2021?"
But it all came together afterwards in this collection. I had the confidence of, "Hey, maybe I am on the right path with this writing that I'm doing."
I love how much of your, your own sense of comedy is just coming through in our chat right now. How much did you channel into your latest book Prairie Edge?
The book itself is meant to be a contemporary take on activist culture, protest culture — and some of the hypocrisy around that. But it's also confronting what it looks like when there are now a herd of bison in your dog park; you want to support Indigenous rights, but you also want to walk your dog. What does that look like to you?
So it's capturing that chaos of bison being released into the middle of downtown Edmonton — and everything that brings.
How do your characters deal with that?
I don't know if they deal with it well: There's characters in there that are trying to build their brand off of social media. There's also a young Métis guy who's just trying to figure out a place to fit in within a contemporary existence. And one of the main characters wants to restore Indigenous governance to the Prairies to see what it would look like to live in a land where we're still honouring treaty obligations — as well as thinking of ways that we can restore the Prairies to its natural state.
And on that same theme, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is on September 30. What book do you think would get readers in the right mindset ahead of that day?
I just finished reading Billy-Ray Belcourt's new short story collection, Coexistence. I feel that that's a must-read book for everyone. It captures a lot of that queer Indigenous experience —and also could be some of that inspiration for yourselves as you're trying to write short stories for this contest.
Just very briefly, just to take it back to this CBC Short Story Prize, what advice do you have for people if they're thinking about maybe submitting something, but they're not sure if it's quite right?
Just get it in. Just send it out there. I know writers tend to tinker and wordsmith and play around forever, they can wait and wait and wait. But at some point, it's great to just send it out there.
And you never know what could happen!
Conor Kerr's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
