Joanna Reid has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Vargas.

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.

Joanna Reid is a writer, researcher and editor from Vancouver. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, the New Quarterly and the Antigonish Review. She has won the Orange Prize for short fiction, been a finalist in the Tennessee Williams fiction contest and been longlisted for the 2011 CBC Short Story Prize. She recently finished a novel for middle-grade readers and is now working on a story collection about crisis and rebirth in adult life — about the friendships and complicated joys that arise after all plans collapse.

"Post-partum anxiety group, plus wolves."

"My grandmother died a few weeks after my son was born. As I was beginning my life as a new mom, my family was involved in all kinds of decisions about end-of-life care. I was running on little sleep and was full of such strong feelings about how beginnings and endings were all tied up together. I would hold this tiny new person and think about how he would one day be old. These kinds of thoughts were not reflected in the dialogue about motherhood I was hearing, and I knew I wanted to write about them."

Here is the new busyness of life. It circles around a hole, a shadowy sadness that has something to do with how everything dies. You knew that before, but you know it differently now. Maybe being a mother is about knowing the same things as before, differently. It's about living days of steady, startling miracles that turn out to be boring when you try to tell them to a friend.

But also: where are all your friends? These women, here, in the circle, are not your friends. They are not rumpled and silly. They are serious and loaded down with baby equipment.

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.