Thinking of submitting to the CBC Nonfiction Prize? Here are some tips from writers who know what it takes
The CBC Nonfiction Prize is accepting submissions from Jan. 1 to March 1
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open now for submissions! 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.
You can submit memoir, biography, humour writing, essay, personal essay travel writing and feature articles up to 2,000 words. The deadline to submit is Thursday, Mar. 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
We know that submitting to a literary prize can be a daunting task. That's why we spoke to some recent CBC Nonfiction Prize winners and finalists as well as one of this year's three jurors to ask them what advice they have for those who might be thinking about submitting or are still undecided about it.
1. Read widely
Christine Lowther says: "Read widely, with mainly Canadian content, largely poetry and nonfiction. Never assume anything hasn't already been said and never compare your accomplishment to others'. Make specificity and accuracy your twin godhead (after Can-Con). Read Indigenous, queer, Asian, Black and Indo-Canadian poets and nonfiction authors."
Never assume anything hasn't already been said and never compare your accomplishment to others.- Christine Lowther
Lowther was one of the finalists for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize. She is the editor of Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees and its youth companion volume. She is also the author of four poetry collections. In 2014, she was presented with the inaugural Rainy Coast Award for Significant Accomplishment. Lowther's memoir Born Out of This was shortlisted for the 2015 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. In 2016, she won first place in the creative non-fiction category of the Federation of British Columbia Writers Literary Writes contest. She served as Tofino's poet laureate during the pandemic.
2. Allow yourself to be afraid
Finnian Burnett says: "Allow yourself to be afraid. Be afraid of the topics you're exploring, be afraid to share your work, be afraid to submit. Sit in the fear and then act through it. The best writing often comes from the places we don't want to visit."
The best writing often comes from the places we don't want to visit.- Finnian Burnett
Burnett holds a doctoral degree in English pedagogy and teaches English online for a U.S. college. Their writing explores intersections of identity — fatness, mental health, disability, queer joy. They're currently working on an epistolary novel about a trans man trying to reconcile a complex relationship with his dead mother. Burnett was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
3. Write what you love
Barbara Joan Scott says: "Instructors often say 'Write what you know.' I believe it is even more important to write what you love, whether that be characters, landscapes, ideas, situations, genres. This does not mean you do not go to dark places: we often love things that are complex, disturbing. If you love something you will want to explore it deeply, gain an intimate knowledge you might not have at the moment. You are likelier to keep coming back to what you love, to keep faith with your creation. There were many times in writing Black Diamond, when I wanted to abandon, but my love for the people and place kept me at it: I couldn't let them down."
If you love something you will want to explore it deeply, gain an intimate knowledge you might not have at the moment.- Barbara Joan Scott
Scott's first book, The Quick, won the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize and the WGA Howard O'Hagan Award for best collection of short fiction. For many years she taught and edited creative writing and in 2015 received the Lois Hole Award for Editorial Excellence. Her first novel, The Taste of Hunger, published in 2022, won a bronze medal for Western Canada from the Independent Book Publishers Awards and has been shortlisted for Trade Book of the Year by the Alberta Book Publishers Association. It was a Quill & Quire book of the year for 2022. Scott was on the shortlist for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
4. Write the best narrative possible
Dan Werb says: "The best way to honour your subjects is to write the best narrative possible. If we worry too much about how others might feel about how they're represented, we can lose sight of the fact that our primary duty is to the story itself. This is not to say that we shouldn't be thoughtful about our subjects: instead, if we work to free ourselves from the burden of their imagined critical eye, we will do better in painting a nuanced and complex picture of who they are out in the world."
The best way to honour your subjects is to write the best narrative possible.- Dan Werb
Werb is a writer and social epidemiologist. He is the author of City of Omens, which was a finalist for a Governor General's Literary Award. Werb's writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time and the Globe and Mail. He currently holds a dual appointment as assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and in the Division of Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego.
In 2022, Werb won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure. The Invisible Siege traces the history of the virus family and the scientists who went to war with it, as well as the lessons learned and lost during the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Werb argues there is no doubt coronaviruses will strike again and that understanding them is the best way to be prepared.
Werb was announced as a juror for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize alongside Michelle Good and Christina Sharpe.
5. Get the good kind of feedback
Susan Cormier says: "Get feedback and writing from people who know writing well — not from people who know you well. If you rely on your friends and family to critique your work, you are likely to get only positive platitudes, because it is their job to support and encourage you.
You can only learn from someone who is more knowledgeable and skilled than you are.- Susan Cormier
"If you want to improve and grow as a writer, turn to people who are better or more experienced writers than you. You can only learn from someone who is more knowledgeable and skilled than you are."
Cormier won the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Cormier is a Métis writer, filmmaker, performer and beekeeper. By day, she is a beekeeper and co-owner of C.R. Apiary in Langley, B.C. By night, she is the producer of Vancouver Story Slam. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Atlantis Women's Studies Journal, B&A New Fiction, West Coast Line and the anthologies Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poets and Against Death: 35 Essays on Living.
6. Don't put so much pressure on yourself
Kelly S. Thompson says: "We feel this need, especially nonfiction, is usually something we've experienced on a personal level, and so the stakes feel higher. But they're not. Most people are able to read something and say this is a piece of art, and there is something really beautiful about a reader on the other end, finding a connection there. And that's the thing that I let drive me. Instead of all the fear that comes with nonfiction, I've really focused on the beauty of it.
Instead of all the fear that comes with nonfiction, I've really focused on the beauty of it.- Kelly S. Thompson
"And I think I mentioned that my finalist piece this year was actually originally a chapter of this book. So, also, just to put something out every year, I literally submit to this contest every single year with a little cross your fingers and who knows how it goes. But I think there's this idea that you know people who have published books or maybe it's so much easier for us and it's just not all of us are still learning and growing as writers every day. So I always say just submit, submit, submit."
Thompson is a retired military officer who holds an MFA and a Ph.D. in creative writing. She has been published in Chatelaine, Maclean's, the Globe and Mail and more. Her memoir Girls Need Not Apply was named among the Globe and Mail's top 100 books of 2019. In 2021, she made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize for Dear CAF.
Thompson was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize for The Edge of Change. The Edge of Change was supposed to be part of her memoir Still, I Cannot Save You, before it was cut in the editing process.
