OTTAWA - Veteran novelist and short story writer Leon Rooke won first prize in the short fiction category at Tuesday night's 2003 CBC Literary Awards.

Rooke was honoured for his unpublished work The Last Shot which covers the afternoon in the life of a twin brother and sister left in the care of their blind grandfather.

The prolific author has published six novels including Fat Woman , The Fall of Gravity and Shakespeare's Dog , for which he won the Governor General's Award.

Last year he received the W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize - an honour for excellence in writing and mentoring.

The competition is open to Canadian writers of all ages. The categories are short story, poetry and travel writing.

British Columbia writer Zoe Landale took top honours in the poetry category for Once a Murderer .

"It's intense professional recognition. Somebody saying to me, hey, you haven't spent the last 20 years wasting your life," she said.

Her winning poem was inspired by her experiences of riding along with the RCMP. Landale was researching her new book about a marijuana grow operation.

Roger Greenwald's Dents in the Laurentiens took top honours in travel writing.

All first prize winners received $6,000. Writers finishing in second place won $4,000.

The winning entries will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, Radio-Canada's la Chaine Culturelle and will be published in Air Canada's enRoute magazine.