13 emerging Canadian writers make 2020 longlist for $10K Journey Prize for short fiction
CBC Books | | Posted: August 12, 2020 8:39 PM | Last Updated: August 12, 2020
Thirteen Canadian writers on the rise are on the longlist for the 2020 Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.
The annual $10,000 award is given to the best short fiction published in a Canadian magazine. It is geared to writers in the early stages of their careers.
Writers on the 2020 longlist include Whitby, Ont.-based poet Canisia Lubrin, author of 2020 poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst and 2017 poetry book Voodoo Hypothesis, which was longlisted for the Gerald Lambert Award, the Pat Lowther Award and was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award.
Also on the list is Kansas City, Mo.-based John Elizabeth Stintzi, a non-binary writer originally from northwestern Ontario who won the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the Malahat Review's 2019 Long Poem Prize for their work Selections From Junebat. The complete poetry collection, Junebat and debut novel Vanishing Monuments were both published in 2020. CBC Books named Stintzi a 2020 writer to watch.
David Huebert, a Halifax-based writer, is on the longlist for his story Chemical Valley. Huebert won the CBC Short Story Prize in 2016 with the story Enigma. He has also won The Walrus Poetry Prize and was a National Magazine Award nominee in 2018 and 2019.
The 2020 jury consists of Téa Mutonji (a Toronto poet and fiction writer whose debut short story collection Shut Up, You're Pretty was on the shortlist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize), Amy Jones (the 2006 CBC Short Story Prize winner and author of award-nominated novels We're All in This Together and Every Little Piece of Me) and Doretta Lau (a Vancouver author of the short story collection How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? and a 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize finalist).
- Why Téa Mutonji wrote about intense girlhood bonds and the beauty of Scarborough
- Why Amy Jones wrote a novel about her home town — and the apocalypse
In association with the prize, McClelland & Stewart annually publishes The Journey Prize Stories anthology, a collection of the longlisted stories.
The finalists will be announced in November. Here's the complete list of longlisted stories:
- The Moth and the Fox by Michela Carrière (Grain Magazine)
- When Foxes Die Electric by Paola Ferrante (Room)
- Hunting by Lisa Foad (Taddle Creek)
- Chemical Valley by David Huebert (The Fiddlehead)
- Bad Cree by Jessica Johns (Grain Magazine)
- She Figures That by Rachael Lesosky (The Malahat Review)
- The Origin of Lullaby by Canisia Lubrin (Joyland Magazine)
- House on Fire by Florence MacDonald (The Dalhousie Review)
- Aurora Borealis by Cara Marks (Exile: The Literary Quarterly)
- Feed Machine by Fawn Parker (EVENT)
- The Rest of Him by Susan Sanford Blades (EVENT)
- Coven Covets Boy by John Elizabeth Stintzi (The Puritan)
- The Last Snow Globe Repairman in the World by Hsien Chong Tan (PRISM international)
The Journey Prize has been awarded since 1989.
Angélique Lalonde won in 2019 for Pooka, published by PRISM International, which tells the story of a carpet collector who fails at achieving online fame.
Other past winners include Yann Martel, Anne Carson and Yasuko Thanh.