Vancouver writer Kate Gunn wins 2024 CBC Short Story Prize for story about women's medical trauma
She will receive $6,000, a writing residency and her work has been published on CBC Books
Vancouver writer Kate Gunn has won the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize for her story Old Bones.
She will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Gunn's story was published on CBC Books. You can read Old Bones here.
Gunn grew up on Galiano Island off the west coast of British Columbia. She currently lives and works in Vancouver. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Prism International and the Antigonish Review.
Gunn had previously been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2019 for Red Sails, a story about her grandmother's journey from Scotland to Canada in the 1950s. She told CBC Books that Old Bones is another piece of that story told from a different perspective.
This year's winner and finalists were selected by a jury comprised of Suzette Mayr, Kevin Chong and Ashley Audrain.
"Old Bones distinguishes itself from the very first line. This intriguing story about a daughter's understanding of her mother's disability, and about feeling love for the very thing that causes pain, is our unanimous favourite. The imagery is striking, the writing tender and beautiful, the storytelling unexpected and powerful. We loved the sense of surprise as the narration unfolds, and the parallels throughout that deliver a satisfying sense of completeness. We marvelled at lines like, 'She took the sun home with her when she left,' and 'All through that year in the hospital, my mother had a small area inside herself that she kept for dangerous wishes.' This writer's voice is thoughtful, original and confident, and we're excited for what they'll do next," the jury said in a statement.
The imagery is striking, the writing tender and beautiful, the storytelling unexpected and powerful.- 2024 CBC Short Story Prize jury
Old Bones aims to understand the experiences of the women who have experienced medical trauma. Gunn told CBC Books that she wanted to explore how these experiences replicate and transform over generations.
"Throughout the story, I was thinking a lot about people, especially women, being really disempowered by certain types of medical procedures. But I also really wanted to bring it back to how, at the same time, love and care and relationships and dreams about other things are still very much alive in those experiences. And so I think that's kind of the thing I would want people to take away from," she said.
Gunn joins a long list of writers who have won CBC Literary Prizes, such as David Bergen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and Michael Winter.
The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979.
"Winning the CBC Short Story Prize is a huge honour. For me, writing is often about trying to communicate feelings and experiences that are hard to capture in words. Although writing itself is a solitary activity, I believe that it is also fundamentally about connection. I'm incredibly grateful that this story resonated with other people. I'm also very grateful to the jury for giving me an opportunity to take this process to a deeper level," Gunn said.
The other four finalists are Miriam Ho Nga Wai of Toronto for Lamentations, Zilla Jones of Winnipeg, for How to Make a Friend, Kailash Srinivasan of North Vancouver, B.C., for The Baby and Carley Thorne of Toronto, for Permission to Pause. They will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
The longlist was compiled by a team of writers and editors from across Canada from more than 1,900 submissions.
Last year's winner was Vancouver writer Will Richter for his story Just a Howl.
The 2024 winner of the Prix de la nouvelle Radio-Canada is Mathieu Blais for his story En plein bois.
For Canadians interested in other writing competitions, check out the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions until June 1, 2024. The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January.
