Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze has made the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Brake (Little Girl, Little Mother).

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.

Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze is a Canadian Nigerian American who loves writing stories about Chinook winds, failure and Igbo masquerades. Her work has been longlisted for the international Commonwealth Short Story Prize twice. In 2021, her short story, dark, won the Writers' Union of Canada's Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. She is currently working on her debut novel while pursuing a law degree. She believes that the jubilant, harrowing and vast histories of the African Diaspora deserve to be explored and engaged with.

"First-born daughter questions her utility."

"I often use writing as therapy. I wanted to work through my complex feelings about being born an Ada — an oldest daughter in an Igbo family. Like all roles, the role of the Ada is defined by expectations: set an example, pass on traditions and be a caregiver. A particular situation made me feel that I had failed in this role. This story came out of that hurt. I wrote the first draft in 2018 and have continued to tweak and augment it over the years."

Before Emeka became a man with curiosity too difficult to distract and agency too capable to adjourn, he asked me why he was so dark. He was five and I was nine, and he didn't remember Nigeria like I did. He didn't know that contrast was a matter of context. What Emeka knew was that his classmate called him dirty, and Emeka wanted to be clean. When I thought about Emeka's deck of cards, my teeth ached. It was the same ache I felt when Emeka told me that he had always wanted a brother. When Emeka sighed that his shoes were outdated. When Emeka lifted a candy bar from the local corner store, one week after the shopkeeper wrongly accused him of shoplifting.

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.