Kasia Van Schaik has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for An Ounce of Care.

The winner of the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and have the opportunity to 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. 22 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 29.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Oct. 31.

Kasia Van Schaik is a writer, teacher and doctoral candidate at McGill University. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacket2, the Best Canadian Poetry anthology and elsewhere. Kasia is the author of the poetry chapbook Sea Burial Laws According to Country. Her novel-in-stories, We Have Never Lived on Earth, is forthcoming. In 2021, Kasia was named the CBC Quebec Writers' Federation writer-in-residence.

"Ambivalent motherhood; lessons in care."

"I've been thinking about what it means to care and be cared for in our era of climate change. Specifically, what it means to bring new life into a world in crisis. Many people around me are asking these questions, so I wanted to examine them through a personal lens. This story takes place on the shoreline, that in-between place that can be filled with discomfort, but also creative possibility. This story invites the reader to consider the connections between mothers and daughters, humans and humpback whales and personal and planetary care."

Two hours out to sea, a forest rises out of the water. On one side of the ferry lies Canada, taking up most of the earth's coastline. On the other, my mother's tidal village, population 800. My younger siblings and I visit occasionally, and she gives us gifts that she has grown in her garden. A squash or a basket of hard yellow pears. She tells us about the rats in the walls of her house; about the neighbours who don't know how to correctly read the sky.

I have not crossed the water in five years, almost six now. It's not that we dislike each other, my mother and I, not any more at least. We don't speak often, but when we do it is always with warmth.

The winner of the 2021 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 the 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 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open for submissions until Oct. 31, 2021. The 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.