Amorina Kingdon has made the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Mangle.

Amorina Kingdon is the staff writer and researcher for Hakai Magazine in Victoria, B.C. Previously, she worked as a science writer for the University of Victoria and a media liaison and writer with the Science Media Centre of Canada. The National Magazine Awards jury awarded her work the gold medal for Best New Magazine Writer in 2017. She also writes speculative fiction and creative nonfiction. A lifelong lover of nature, when not writing she's usually running, hiking or climbing.

Why you don't believe yourself?

"This was always just that thing that happened to me that was kind of maddening, that I'd share with people if we were sharing that kind of thing. But with the #MeToo movement, I've taken a closer look at what actually happened, and unpacked my own responses to the various threats in the story. When is something truly dangerous? How do you know? Are you a reliable judge of that? How bad should you feel for even asking yourself that question? This was my perception of it, I certainly could have been completely 'wrong' about everything and that fact was always swimming below the memory. The incidents were also bookended by the physical dangers of the bike accident and the shooting, so I knew if I wrote about it, those elements would be part of it."

"I move to Little Italy in May when everything's peppered with green maple flowers and wet with spring rain. When June arrives I'm on my friend's Leslieville balcony toasting my new life in Toronto with three glasses of red wine. Later, pedaling home fast across the Viaduct, my front bicycle tire jams in the asphalt around a storm grate on Bloor Street. I fly over the handlebars and land on my right knee, my left shoulder, and the heel of my right hand. A mangled tripod, I skid to a stop only when the friction of road on skin overcomes momentum."

The winner of the 2018 CBC Nonfiction 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 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.