Yukoner longlisted for CBC literary prize
CBC News | Posted: March 15, 2015 2:23 PM | Last Updated: March 15, 2015
Kirsten Madsen's 'Mule Deer,' about hitchiking in the Yukon, is longlisted for a short story prize
In about one month, a Yukoner will find out if her fictional story about hitchhiking is the winner of a prestigious literary prize.
Kirsten Madsen is one of 26 authors longlisted for the 2015 CBC Short Story Prize, worth $6,000.
The Whitehorse-based writer says Mule Deer is based on a series of stories told to her by a friend who lived outside of Whitehorse and regularly picked up hitchhikers.
A lot of my stories aren't set in the Yukon so I was kind of pleased that this one was selected. - Kirsten Madsen
"Often, when you're a writer, people tell you things and say 'You should write a story about that,'" Madsen says with a laugh. "And almost invariably it's something that you would never ever want to write about, but in this case some of her stories really resonated with me."
Madsen says the story is told in the context of a lonely woman, insecure with her place in life. It's based in the Yukon, Madsen says, but with fictitious place names.
"A lot of my stories aren't set in the Yukon so I was kind of pleased that this one was selected," she says.
Madsen recently graduated from the creative writing master's program at the University of British Columbia and has moved into novel writing, although she says she still loves to write and read short stories. She wrote Mule Deer more than 10 years ago, as part of a longer piece.
The CBC Short Story Prize is for submissions between 1,200 and 1,500 words. The winner, to be announced on April 13, will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and offered a 10-day writing residency at The Banff Centre in Alberta.