Omar El Akkad, Casey Plett and David Bergen will judge the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize.

The CBC Short Story Prize recognizes original, unpublished fiction up to 2,500 words. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.

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 open for submissions until Oct. 31, 2021. The finalists will be announced in spring 2022.

El Akkad has written for publications including the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde and Guernica. His debut novel, American War, was translated into 13 languages and won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. The New York Times and the Washington Post featured the 2017 novel on their respective "best book of the year" lists, and it was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. American War was defended by Tahmoh Penikett on Canada Reads 2018. His short story, Government Slots, was included in Best Canadian Stories 2020. His new novel What Strange Paradise is shortlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Plett's novel Little Fish won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award for best transgender fiction. Her short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, also won a Lambda Literary Award. She is the co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. Her writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Maclean's, The Walrus, Plenitude and the Winnipeg Free Press. Plett was awarded an Honour of Distinction from The Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. Her most recent book is the short story collection A Dream of a Woman, which was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Bergen has authored 10 novels and two collections of short stories. His works include The Time in Between, which won the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Matter with Morris, which received the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Age of Hope, which was defended by Ron MacLean on Canada Reads in 2013. His short fiction collection Here the Dark was a finalist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. He also won the 1999 CBC Short Story Prize for How can men share a bottle of vodka and his latest novel, Out of Mind, was published in fall 2021.

A panel of established writers and editors from across the country review the submissions to determine the longlist. The jury will select the shortlist and winner.

Last year's winner was B.C. writer Corinna Chong for her story Kids in Kindergarten.

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The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979.

Past winners include Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields, Michael Winter and Frances Itani.​

The 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2022 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.