Tricia Snell has made the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Out to the Horses.

Tricia Snell's stories have appeared in Every Day Fiction, The Grove Review and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project on the National Public Radio show The Sound of Writing. She has served as executive director of two arts nonprofit organizations and teaches writing, literature and music. Honours and degrees include a Sherwood Anderson Foundation scholarship for fiction, a Mary Roberts Rhinehart Award in fiction, Hedgebrook and Ragdale writing residencies, an MFA in creative writing/fiction from George Mason University and a Flute Performance ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music, in Toronto. She lives in Lunenburg, N.S., and is currently writing a novel.

Innocence lost in an afternoon.

"I am drawn to those raw moments where one way of knowing is abruptly shattered by another, and where civility wars with wildness. These tendencies, combined with our current historical moment of women 'telling,' led to this story."

Typical pastimes for me and my friends included smoking pot at the beach and body surfing in the waves, drinking vodka at the conservation area and walking the trails, or taking mescaline and tripping out on the trains that rushed under a bridge out Lakeshore Road. In summer, we hot-knifed hash at Dave Lane's parents' lake cottage then put on our swim suits and jumped off the cliff across the bay. Once, we turned the lights out in Jack Sullivan's van and drove the concession roads by moonlight and a Tubular Bells cassette. Another time we dropped windowpane acid and lay under a winter sky at the mill barn to watch the Northern lights. When people ask about my high school days, I like to say it was Mark Twain with drugs.

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.