Amanda Leduc has made the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for All This, and Heaven Too.

Amanda Leduc is a disabled writer and author of The Miracles of Ordinary Men and the forthcoming books Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, And Making Space, and The Centaur's Wife. Her essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US and the UK. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ont., where she serves as the communications and development coordinator for The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada's first festival for diverse authors and stories.

Bullies, miracles and the afterlife.

"I've always been fascinated by the idea of forgiveness, as well as magic and power. I wanted to explore what forgiveness could mean in a situation where someone might be reluctant to give it — and specifically, where that forgiveness might literally mean the difference between life and death."

It's like this, okay: there's a white hall, and a long wooden floor, and a white mist and white walls, and everything smells like plastic — I don't know why but it does, that sort of faint, industrial smell you get from a factory or sometimes a cheap fog machine — and at the end of the hall there's another light, one so bright it hurts, and that's where you're supposed to go.

It's not a warm light, or a golden light. It's just... there. You step far enough into it and the light dissolves your cheekbones, like some kind of feathery acid. I've seen it happen. You exist, and then you don't. That's what the light does.

The winner of the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.