Lisa Alward has made the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Orlando 1974.

Lisa Alward's short fiction has appeared in The Journey Prize Stories 2017 and Best Canadian Stories 2017 and Best Canadian Stories 2016. She is the winner of the New Quarterly's 2016 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award as well as the 2015 Fiddlehead Short Fiction Prize. She lives in Fredericton, N.B.

Nuclear-family meltdown at Disney World.

"Recently, an old friend told me the story of a bizarre trip she took to Orlando as a child, which got me thinking about my own family's Disney vacation in the early 1970s — how my parents, and particularly my father, tried so hard to make it magical yet how the cracks in their marriage kept showing through."

My father says that Stephen only threw up because of the Hawaiian pancakes and can still go to the Magic Kingdom. His throw-up has chunks of pineapple and this white goo that could be marshmallows or the Cool Whip. It quivers on the pavement like a jellyfish. "Don't look," my father says, hustling Dougie and me into the rental car. "He's fine," he tells my mother, who is wiping Stephen's shirt with a Kleenex and doesn't turn around.

The winner of the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, will have their story published on CBC Books and will have the opportunity to attend a 10-day 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 story published on CBC Books.