Dennis Allen has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The White Stetson Hat.

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.

Dennis Allen is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and musician. Winner of the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award for CBQM, The Best Little Radio Station in the North, and the Sally Manning Award for creative nonfiction, Dennis is a storyteller at heart. Dennis is working on a collection of short stories based on the characters in The White Stetson Hat. When not heating things up on Facebook, Dennis enjoys hunting for his food and telling his two kids stories about growing up with no internet in his hometown of Inuvik, N.W.T.

"Merle Haggard comes to town."

"The north is an unforgiving place. To exist here, you need to develop a sense of humour and learn to laugh at yourself, even when you fall. It is like a forced humility. If you don't laugh at yourself, others will. You learn to make a story out of your misfortunes. The stories pile up and get tangled, like a team of huskies in a dog fight. In that mess is the humour that drives us past our pain. As time goes by, the story gets retold so many times that it becomes legend. I am inspired by storytellers who can find the humility to laugh at themselves."

Luke Jackson gotta be the greatest Merle Haggard fan ever born. Every year at the Rabbit-skin River Spring Jamboree, Luke jump in the talent show and sing his favourite Merle Haggard song, "Sing me back home." He got every 8-track tape of Merle Haggard ever made in a cardboard box he keep beside him in his 1975 Ford crew cab. Luke like to drive around town with his arm hanging out the cab door and a Player's Plain cigarette dangling off his lip as he sing along to his favourite songs. The girls pretend not to take notice but they like Luke's big gap-toothed smile and his jailhouse tattoos.

Luke got sick last fall and the doctor found a big cancer in his kidney. When we get the news that Merle Haggard might be coming to Edmonton next spring, few of us get together and figure out how we're gonna get Luke a ticket. Nobody got spare cash on account of the logging camp shut down. We gotta think hard how to come up with a hundred bucks for the ticket.

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.