5 writers make the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize shortlist
Daphné Santos-Vieira | CBC Books | Posted: September 19, 2024 10:03 AM | Last Updated: September 19
Read the stories now!
Writers Ted Bishop, Aldona Dziedziejko, Alison Pick, Evelyn N. Pollock and Emi Sasagawa have made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize shortlist.
Their nominated works are:
- On Not Knowing Cree by Ted Bishop (Edmonton)
- Ice Safety Chart: Fragments by Aldona Dziedziejko (Rocky Mountain House, Alta.)
- Not in Their Names by Alison Pick (Toronto)
- Is Life a Tossed Salad? by Evelyn N. Pollock (Coldwater, Ont.)
- Dad's the Word by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
The winner will be announced on Sept. 26. They will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
The remaining four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
All five finalists had their entries published on CBC Books. You can read their works by clicking on the links above.
The longlist was selected from more than 1,400 submissions. Submissions are processed by a two-tiered system: the initial texts are screened by a reading committee chosen for each category from a group of qualified editors and writers across the country. Each text is read by two readers.
The readers come up with a preliminary list of approximately 100 texts that are then forwarded to a second reading committee. It is this committee who will decide upon the 30 entries that comprise the longlist that is forwarded to the jury.
The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Michelle Good, Dan Werb and Christina Sharpe.
Works are judged anonymously on the basis of the participant's use of language, originality of subject and writing style. For more on how the judging for the CBC Literary Prizes works, visit the FAQ page.
The shortlist for the French-language competition has also been revealed. To read more, go to the Prix de la création Radio-Canada.
Last year's winner was B.C. writer Louie Leyson for their essay Glossary for an Aswang.
If you're interested in other writing competitions, check out the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is currently accepting submissions. The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
Get to know the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize English-language finalists below.
On Not Knowing Cree by Ted Bishop
Ted Bishop is the author of The Social Life of Ink, which was a finalist for the 2015 Governor General Literary Award for Non-fiction, and Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books. In 2022 he published Ulysses Blue, an essay for British typographer John Morgan's Usylessly: an exact physical replica of the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, which is completely blank.
His article in Edify magazine, Imagining Treaty 6, takes up the question of land acknowledgments through a motorcycle ride around the territory. He lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 land and writes with a fountain pen.
Previously, Bishop won second place for the CBC Nonfiction Prize, formerly Travel Writing, in 2002 for The Motorcycle and the Archive.
Why he wrote On Not Knowing Cree: "I always felt uneasy during land acknowledgements, because 'acknowledge' means to 'own the knowledge of,' and I had never seen a map of the territory, never read the treaty, never heard a word of the other languages I shared a treaty with. I had no knowledge to own.
So I read the treaty, did the motorcycle ride mentioned above, and signed up for a Cree class at my local library. - Ted Bishop
"So I read the treaty, did the motorcycle ride (mentioned above), and signed up for a Cree class at my local library.
"I also used the contest as a challenge to cut down my rambling 9,000 word piece to 2,000 words."
Ice Safety Chart: Fragments by Aldona Dziedziejko
Aldona Dziedziejko recently left her post as a guest and teacher in a Northern Canadian hamlet in the Tlicho region of the Dene. She has lived on Canada's West Coast, and before that, on the northern coast of Poland. She is now based in Clearwater Country, Alta., and delights in spotting wild horses and being a mom.
Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in CV2, subTerrain, The Capilano Review, Fiction Southeast, PRISM international and the Globe and Mail. She recently won the Room magazine's Short Forms Contest and the Arc Poetry magazine's Award of Awesomeness.
Why she wrote Ice Safety Chart: Fragments: "I decided to leave the metropolis behind and live in a remote fishing village so that I could dream, write and escape. Transformations are hard-won and I didn't anticipate ancient wounds to move through me before I could experience life anew with the help of the unknowable, amazing and harsh arctic landscape.
"What shows up when you dig deep? Does the landscape speak? What secrets does it hold? Our topography, our environment connects us: and so do our ancestral experiences — for better or for worse. This is an ode to a place like no other on earth: where the ice and snow are blank pages awaiting our thoughts and where dogs howl songs into the wind.
Our topography, our environment connects us: and so do our ancestral experiences — for better or for worse. - Aldona Dziedziejko
"My family and I lived under the shadow of the Iron Curtain and the Canadian north represents both the epitome of freedom as well as shades of familiar socio-economic issues.
"I invite readers to visit inside my mind for a time, but also to take in this essential part of our country where people live so differently. Also, eco-anxiety drives my need to consider permafrost, the changing Indigenous communities and what it means to be a woman, a guest and a settler at this point in time."
Not in Their Names by Alison Pick
Alison Pick's novel Far to Go was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and has been optioned by House of Film in Toronto. Her memoir Between Gods was shortlisted for both the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and for the JQ Wingate Prize in the UK.
Pick is a past winner of the CBC Literary Award, a National Magazine Award, and the Bronwen Wallace Award. She served on the jury for the 2015 Giller Prize and has twice been a fellow at both Yaddo and MacDowell. Currently on faculty at the Humber School for Writers, Alison Pick lives and writes in Toronto.
Pick won the CBC Poetry Prize in 2005 for The Mind's Eye. The CBC Literary Prizes anthology, featuring the first-prize English-language winners from 2001 to 2006, was titled after her winning poem. She was a CBC Short Story Prize juror in 2012.
Why she wrote Not in Their Names: "In 2018 I traveled to the West Bank. What I saw there forced me to reckon with the Israeli occupation and with my own potential complicity as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors."
We recognize that the conflict in the Middle East is a highly complex story and we would point to the work of our colleagues in the News division in exploring the wider political context. You can review CBC News coverage at this link, which is updated regularly.
Is Life a Tossed Salad? by Evelyn N. Pollock
Following successful careers in teaching, educational politics and human rights consulting, Evelyn N. Pollock retired to pursue her lifelong passions: writing and painting. She moved from Toronto to Horseshoe Valley, Ont., with her husband. Evelyn was a four-time participant in the Muskoka Novel Marathon, has attended many writing retreats and any of her short stories have been published in anthologies such as: A Canvas of Words, Whispered Words, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Mariposa Exposed and Mariposa Revisited.
She has published a nonfiction book, Thirty-three Years to Conception: A Voice from the Street. Recently, she collaborated with five authors to publish Pieces of Us, an Anthology that includes eight of her short stories. Evelyn is currently working on a nonfiction book, Will You Still Love Me?
Why she wrote Is Life a Tossed Salad?: "My older brother died at age 44, a victim of the AIDS epidemic. My parents were devastated. Almost three decades later we lost our 43-year-old son during the opioids crisis. Authoring this story gave me the opportunity to examine emotional parallels and consider how our family handled loss in different generations. It also allowed me to explore questions about genetic destiny versus chance.
"Many families have suffered losses during recent pandemics and epidemics. This story is a tribute to my late parents, brother and son, remembering them, while advocating for others who have suffered stigma, loss and isolation in silence, during deadly pandemics. I hope this story will dispel negative stereotypes and help others in similar circumstances go forward and embrace life again.
This story is a tribute to my late parents, brother and son, remembering them, while advocating for others who have suffered stigma, loss and isolation in silence. - Evelyn N. Pollock
"I was inspired to write by my late father who lived the adage 'I am my brother's keeper.' He read philosophy, history, and biblical texts in English and Hebrew late into the night, and through his articles, essays and speeches, advocated for fair treatment of others.
"I was also inspired by my mother who always had a half-painted canvas on an easel in our kitchen. She taught me joy and inclusiveness, as she welcomed friends and strangers into our modest home.
"In my paintings, I express what I see and feel with a brush. In my writing, I paint what I see and feel with words."
Dad's the Word by Emi Sasagawa
Emi Sasagawa is a settler, immigrant and queer woman of colour, living and writing on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations.
Sasagawa's debut novel Atomweight was selected by CBC Books as one of the works of Canadian fiction to read in the first half of 2023 and dubbed by The Tyee as "a propulsive exploration of growth and becoming." The novel is an invitation for readers to reflect on their intersectional identity, through privilege and power, and reimagine how we may take up space and hold space for others.
Sasagawa was a reader for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize.
LISTEN | Emi Sasagawa discusses her debut novel Atomweight:
Why she wrote Dad's the Word: "When I was six years old, I stopped calling my father Otousan, after a classmate pointed out all the other kids called their fathers 'Dad.' The abrupt shift was both a desperate attempt to integrate and an intentional effort to elicit an emotional response from a parent that struggled to communicate how he felt.
"In this story, I wanted to explore the tension we feel as mixed children inhabiting seemingly monolithic cultures, where who we want to be is often in conflict with where we come from.
I wanted to explore the tension we feel as mixed children inhabiting seemingly monolithic cultures, where who we want to be is often in conflict with where we come from. - Emi Sasagawa
"I recently had the opportunity to read this piece to my father. Afterwards, we both got to articulate our memories of that period in our lives. I wanted to honour that experience, and the connection I feel towards him by sharing the story more broadly."