Angie Ellis has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Strangers.

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.

Angie Ellis lives on Vancouver Island where she is finishing her first novel. Some of her short stories can be found in Grain, The Fiddlehead, Narrative, Juked and The Cincinnati Review. She's the recent and very grateful recipient of a writing grant from Canada Council for the Arts. Her work has been nominated or listed for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions and the William Faulkner — William Wisdom competition. Her story Salt Water was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize.

"Moments of boldness between strangers."

"I pulled parts of this story from my novel-in-progress, but it very quickly evolved into its own thing. As I played with it, the characters and setting changed, and a whole new meaning emerged. I suppose, with the current state of things, I found myself concerned with ideas around disconnection and aloneness. What eventually connects these characters, sometimes only briefly, are moments of boldness. A sort of raw honesty as they open themselves up to someone else in unexpected ways."

She was a clam-digger and always muddy. Thin and sharp-eyed, small everywhere but round in the belly. Her mother said she would grow a bosom until her milk dried up, and her milk would dry up after the baby was sent to the reverend's Home of Mercy for the Children of Unwed Mothers.

"Then I'm like a cow," the girl said, flattening a palm over each breast.

"You're like some kind of animal, doing what you did. Get in the tub before it goes cold."

"Anyway," she said, thinking of her grandmother who did what she liked. "I'm going to keep it."

"Of course you won't keep it."

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.