Kate Timmers has made the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The Schmiss.

The shortlist will be announced on April 15. The winner will be announced on April 22.

Kate Timmers is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly and The Antigonish Review. Born in Winnipeg, she lives in Kitchener, Ont., with her family.

Rear Window with a desperate housewife.

"In 2012, I lived in Heidelberg, Germany, in a flat that overlooked the back garden of an old and wealthy fraternity. The students often practiced fencing there to prepare for ritual duels. Some really did have the traditional, grisly facial scar. One summer evening my daughter and I were in the kitchen while an outdoor dinner party was going on below. A guest levelled a duelling pistol at someone across the table. I took a photograph. In it, everyone is laughing as if this was a perfectly ordinary thing."

In the fifth spring of our marriage my husband took up road cycling, which I tried and failed not to take personally. He'd always had the easy athleticism of someone who had played a bit of every sport as a child. As an adult he went through periods of serial devotion to particular activities; he was coming off a years-long affair with Olympic weightlifting. He was already a dedicated commuter cyclist, especially that year, when we lived in a German university town with an abundance of bicycle paths. The pivot to serious cycling happened so quickly that there was no time for me to consider its ramifications.

The winner of the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and attend a two-week 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 work published on CBC Books.