Mo Markham has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Fed Up To Her Eyeballs.

The winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and have the opportunity to 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.

The shortlist will be announced on April 22 and the winner will be announced on April 29.

Mo Markham is a pagan lesbian feminist middle-aged emerging writer. She has always been an activist, for the rights of women and the rights of people of all gender and racial identities. Currently her activism focuses on the rights of animals, the planet and the children who will inherit our Earth. She has a BA and an MA in English from the University of Windsor and a Master of social work from Wilfrid Laurier University. Originally from Windsor, Ont., she now makes her home in Kitchener-Waterloo with her five vegan cats. Mo has had fiction and nonfiction published and has had a short story published in the anthology Dispatches from Lesbian America. She believes in story and magic, and in the sacredness and interconnectedness of all beings.

"Women rising up."

"I remember my mom talking about a neighbour woman who would walk across the fields in the snow with her children in the middle of the night to get away from an abusive husband. My mom would turn my older siblings sideways in their beds to make room for the extra kids. And the next day the woman would go home, because back then there were no shelters.

"There are other bits of family lore in the story as well. I was nearly born on a city bus. My oldest sister was writing an article about the graveyards in Essex County, so graveyards were a common outing when I was a child. One of my sister-in-law's got her girls a tarantula so they wouldn't be afraid of spiders. My mom burned down an old shed to get rid of it, and the fire department really did have to be called because it got out of control.

"My mom was a fireball, and probably the first feminist in my life, though she wouldn't have called herself that. Her spirit is strong for me in this story, though the story itself is fiction."

My mama is always doing things people don't so much appreciate. Like getting us piranhas and tarantulas for pets, so we can learn not to be afraid of things and get an education while we're at it, even though we want, and she knows we want, cuddly kittens or bunnies or puppies like our friends have. Or putting peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches in our lunches, even though we hate peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches, and she knows we hate peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches, because she's run out of margarine, again, and she just wants to moisten the bread. Or taking us on outings to the graveyard instead of the zoo, and collecting rubbings of old graves and fossils instead of fancy silver spoons and china statues like other kids' mothers.

She always says she just does what she thinks is right in the moment, and she does it every moment as far as anyone can tell, though we don't always think much of what she thinks is right in some moments.

The winner of the 2021 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 the 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.

The 2021 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until May 31, 2021. The 2022 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2022.