Kathleen Crandall has made the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The Waiting Room.

The winner of the 2022 CBC Short Story 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 April 21 and the winner will be announced on April 28.

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

Kathleen Crandall is a retired English, French and English second language teacher. She has lived in both Ontario and Quebec but now makes her home on Vancouver Island. Writing short stories has always been one of her passions and in the last two years she has devoted her time and energy to writing a novel and several short fiction pieces. Crandall is a member of a writing group out of Moniack Mhor in the highlands of Scotland.

"See, listen, acknowledge; humanity awaits."

"As I walk in the streets, sit on a bench in a park, wait in lines at the grocery store, visit my local library or wait in a medical clinic, I see people who seem to have their lives together and I see others who are struggling. What affects me the most is how, with a moment's glance, we can decide that we will ignore or, even worse, decide that we will not see a person who is right in front of us. We make someone invisible based on our preconceived ideas, ideas that we have
never examined. A few years ago, when I was in a walk-in clinic, an Indigenous man came into the clinic. I watched him attempt to interact with people in the waiting room and he was met with cold stares and indifference. To write my story, I imagined him having a story that was so deep, so rich and heartfelt that they let themselves be changed by this man and his story."

It was five o'clock when he entered the walk-in. He was whistling and everyone looked up as he strode up to the window of the office and knocked. Minutes before the receptionist had hung up a sign saying that the clinic was full for the evening and now she was typing.

"You are number 10," she'd said when I'd signed in 10 minutes earlier, "and full is full."

The whistling man raised his hand, right beside the sign and knocked, not once but three times.

The winner of the 2022 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.

The 2022 CBC Poetry Prize is currently open for submissions until May 31, 2022. The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2023.