Brendan Bowles has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The Museum of Empty Promises.

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.

Brendan Bowles was born in London, Ont. He holds an MA from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His work has been published and produced for stage and radio and has been generously supported by fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Lighthouse Works and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. He is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University. This is his third time on the longlist for the CBC Short Story Prize.

"A trip to New York."

"Something I'd read in a book about a dog who outlived nine previous owners."

I grew up with a stinky old basset hound. He had a funk so greasy you'd have to wipe it on your jeans after touching him. I was always getting pink eye from that dog — I didn't care — I loved to kiss him on the nose.

So it gave me hope when I first met Nova. Nova with the sad eyes. Sad-eyed Nova, a silver pitbull, a real headcase, she belonged to a guy I used to date. Cuyler, the owner, was a California boy, the kind I'd heard about in songs, who grew up surfing, blonde all over, so easy in his own body, didn't even own sunglasses. A floppy-eared pit and her floppy-haired owner, his Clint Eastwood squint. Early on Cuyler and I had to have a talk about sandals and deodorant — less of one in public, please, more of the other.

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.