Thila Varghese has made the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The Charcoal Marks.

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.

Thila Varghese lives in London, Ont., where she works part-time during the academic year as a senior writing advisor at Western University. Her short story, On the Edge of My Couch, received an honourable mention in the Edmonton Journal Short Story Contest. As a freelance writer, Varghese has contributed news and feature articles to publications in Red Deer, Alta., as well as Fort Frances and London, Ont. Her translations of Tamil literary works have been published in international journals and magazines.

"Compassion that keeps hope alive."

"A few years ago, when I visited my mother in Karaikal, a coastal town in South India, construction work on a multi-storey building was underway across from the home I grew up in. Most of the construction workers were young migrant workers, who worked all day, bathed under the municipal tap at the street corner and slept at the construction site. The story grew out of observing the conditions under which the migrant workers worked and lived, imagining the bonds that could form among them and thinking that someone is probably waiting somewhere for each one of them to return home safely."

The old lady counted the charcoal marks on the dingy wall of her kudisai, a little hovel made of mud she called her own. The sun pierced through the holes of the coconut-frond roof and she covered part of her face with the crumpled end of her saree to shield her eyes.

"…76… 77…78…."

As she neared 100, her counting began to falter at the sound of blaring horns. Outside, buses were trying to overtake one another on Manthoppu Saalai, a winding road on the highway to Chennai, busy with traffic. She started counting all over again.

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 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 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.