"Last year, I decided to measure the pieces on the criteria of necessity. With every story, I asked myself: 'How necessary does this feel?' It wasn't so much that I was looking for stories about big important topics, it was more that I wanted to feel as though the writer absolutely needed to say what was in the piece. The stories that I felt most connected to had that element of personal necessity — a sense that the writer absolutely had to tell this story. I urge all writers to ask themselves the same question about their entries: 'Is this necessary for me to say? And if so, why?' The pieces that leave no doubt as to the answers to those questions tend to resonate with readers much more so than pieces that are simply well-written or clever or timely."

Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian author and journalist based in Portland, Ore. In 2018 he was a reader for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. His debut novel, American War, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, listed as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and has been translated into a dozen languages. It was defended on Canada Reads 2018 by Tahmoh Penikett.