Meet the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize readers
Every year, CBC Books enlists the help of established writers and editors from across Canada to read the thousands of entries submitted to our prizes.
Our readers compile the longlist, which is given to the jury. The jury then selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the longlisted selections. The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 15 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 22.
The winner of the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, attend a two-week writing residency at the 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 will have their work published on CBC Books.
If you are interested in entering the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize is open and accepting submissions until Oct. 31, 2022.
The 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
Here are the 12 writers who served as readers for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt's fiction, essays and poems have appeared in publications such as the 2015 and 2019 editions of Best Canadian Essays, the New Quarterly, Grain, EVENT, Prairie Fire, the Malahat Review, the Antigonish Review, Room and the Toronto Star. She holds an MA from McGill University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She is the author of the poetry collection Chaos Theories of Goodness and Peacekeeper's Daughter: A Middle East Memoir.
Robert Boschman
Robert Boschman grew up in Prince Albert, Sask., on Treaty 6 lands. He is a professor of American Literature at Mount Royal University in Calgary, where he chairs the Department of English, Languages and Cultures. In 2021, Boschman published White Coal City: A Memoir of Place and Family through the University of Regina Press.
Cid V Brunet
Cid V Brunet spent their 20s stripping in clubs across Canada. They received a degree in creative writing from Douglas College and went on to participate in the Quebec Writers' Federation mentorship program, where they wrote their first book, This Is My Real Name. They are now a graduate student at the University of British Columbia. Brunet lives and writes in Montreal.
Kit Dobson
Kit Dobson is a faculty member at the University of Calgary and is, most recently, the author of the book Field Notes on Listening, published by Wolsak & Wynn. His other books include Transnational Canadas: Canadian Literature and Globalization, Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace and Malled: Deciphering Shopping in Canada. Dobson lives in Calgary, in southern Alberta's Treaty Seven territory.
Phyllis Dyson
Phyllis Dyson is the author of Among Silent Echoes: A Memoir of Trauma and Resilience. An elementary school teacher, she holds a bachelor of arts in music and a graduate diploma in special education. She is a long-time member of the British Columbia Schizophrenia Society and has promoted mental health awareness in her community through a program called Partnership. She lives in a small town on British Columbia's west coast with her husband and two daughters.
Joanne Gallant
Joanne Gallant is a pediatric nurse and writer. She holds degrees from Mount Allison University and the University of Alberta. In 2020, she was selected as an apprentice writer in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program through the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. Her debut book, A Womb in the Shape of a Heart: My Story of Miscarriage and Motherhood, was published in fall 2021 by Nimbus Publishing. Her writing has also been published in Oh Reader and Mutha Magazine. Gallant lives in Halifax with her husband and son.
Garry Leeson
Garry Leeson is an author, playwright and auctioneer from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. He is also sometimes a logger, farmer and trumpet player. His plays have had productions in Kentville and Lunenburg and his short stories have been featured on CBC Radio. He was longlisted for the 2012 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Leeson received an Arts Nova Scotia grant and in 2020 received the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for nonfiction for his book, The Dome Chronicles. His latest book is a work of fiction titled The Secret of the Spring. He lives with his wife, Andrea and a menagerie of animals in the community of Harmony, N.S.
Rowan McCandless
Rowan McCandless writes from Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg. She is the creative nonfiction editor for Fiddlehead magazine. Her writing has appeared in various print and online journals and in the anthologies Black Writers Matter, A Harp in the Stars and Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. In 2018 she was longlisted for the Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and won the Malahat Review's Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize. In 2020, she won gold at the National Magazine Awards. Her debut book, Persephone's Children, is a hybrid memoir about McCandless' odyssey as a Black, biracial woman who escaped the stranglehold of domestic abuse.
Corey Mintz
Corey Mintz is a freelance food reporter focusing on the intersection between food with labour, politics, farming, ethics and culture. His work has been published in publications such as the New York Times, the Globe and Mail and Eater. A former cook and a restaurant critic, he is the author of The Next Supper: The End Of Restaurants As We Knew Them, and What Comes After and How to Host a Dinner Party.
Jolie Phuong Hoang
Jolie Phuong Hoang is a college professor of mathematics and has been teaching for more than 26 years. Her creative nonfiction memoir, Anchorless, published in December 2019, won the 2020 North Street Book Prize for Literary Fiction. Hoang's latest book, Three Funerals for My Father: Love, Loss and Escape from Vietnam, is a poignant story of love, grief and resilience.
Jaspreet Singh
Jaspreet Singh's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Granta, Brick, Walrus, Zoetrope and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He's authored three novels, Helium, Chef and Face, a short story collection, Seventeen Tomatoes, a book of poetry, November and a memoir, My Mother, My Translator. His work has garnered several awards and has been translated into many languages. He lives in Calgary.
Manjushree Thapa
Manjushree Thapa is the author of several books of literary nonfiction, such as All of Us in Our Own Lives, centred on the social and political upheavals in her homeland, Nepal. She has reported on the Maoist insurgency, the abolition of the monarchy, as well as on the ongoing quest for social justice in Nepal. Her essays have appeared in publications including the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, the Walrus and the Globe and Mail. She also writes socially and politically engaged fiction and translates Nepali literature into English. Thapa was born in Kathmandu, where she lived and worked for half her life before moving to Toronto.
