Tessa Swackhammer has made the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Bogs, Bodies and Belt Buckles.

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.

Tessa Swackhammer is a self-taught author and poet residing in Hamilton, Ont. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in magazines in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Plough Arts Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the 2022 New Millennium Writing Awards. Her work is often described as a "painfully-present, dream-like absurdity," which is how it feels to know her. Swackhammer is currently on submission for her debut adult fiction novel.

"Raw, self, honesty, grief, separation"

"I spent my formative years in a small, insular town before my life was uprooted. I've always had a deep and sincere fascination with the sticky webs that exist in the network of suburbia that permeate just below the surface — how these ugly and uncertain things can exist beneath a gloss of a town's exterior. This particular story was written during a period of time in my life where I was exploring my queerness in a new form and watching my friends attempt to navigate similar situations with their families, figuring out how to hold their truth and preserve their familial relationships at the same time.

"This character is a love letter to the things you gain when you own all of yourself, that grief of losing the future your family thought you'd have, the experiences stripped away from you, the untethered feeling of being on your own, but at the same time, feeling the world unfurling like a flower opening to bloom, a sudden and welcome explosion of possibilities."

There are six of them on the sidewalk and they are walking right at me. My therapist would consider the use of "at" rather than "toward" a cognitive choice to see them as an aggravated threat rather than a gaggle of teenagers, too young to even know what to do with their pelvises they're so eager to hump the air with. Crude, yeah, that's the word.

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.