Cathrin Hagey has made the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Where There's Smoke.

Cathrin Hagey lives in Saskatoon, though her childhood imagination was fed by adventures in the ravine carved by Sulphur Creek in southern Ontario, where she was raised. She holds degrees in mathematics and education and currently works as an editor and columnist for Luna Station Quarterly, a speculative fiction magazine for emerging women-identified authors. Cathrin was longlisted for the 2018 CANSCAIP Writing for Children Competition. She is currently seeking a publisher for her book-length memoir, one chapter of which was recently honoured as a Memoir Magazine notable essay.

"A girl craves warmth."

"The ravine near my childhood home was sometimes the safest place I could be, though I was never ignorant of the potential for harm. My great aunt had been my main source of maternal comfort until family conflict tore her from my life too soon. The desire to recreate my aunt's hearth in my ravine 'home' was urgent and nearly led to tragedy. Until I began writing my memoir, I hadn't connected these threads."

A great deciduous forest breathes life across eastern America, making inroads into southwestern Ontario, offering up a species-rich region of relative warmth: zebra swallowtail, American chestnut, possum, grass pike and dusky salamander abide there. Creeks plunge from the Niagara Escarpment, foam, and carry on, ripe with fishes swimming alongside the fossil remains of their Silurian ancestors — powerful veins that pulsed life into the cotton and woolen mills worked by migrants from the old world. The woods and the rich, fertile land drew my parents' ancestors to this place. For my generation, the ravines were the place to run, climb, build muscle and confidence; elicit first drink, first kiss, first heartbreak.

The winner of the 2019 CBC Nonfiction 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.

The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 18, 2019. The winner will be announced on Sept. 25, 2019.