Dale Harris has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for The New Parson of Petit-Wasmes.

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.

Dale Harris is an author, songwriter and Free Methodist minister. His first novel, Though I Walk (Word Alive Press), won the Braun Book Award for fiction in 2020. He blogs regularly about God, life, words and spirituality at his blog terra incognita. He wrote and produced The Saint and the Slave, a musical based on the life of St. Patrick (2018). When he's not writing, he serves as lead pastor of the Corner Church in Oshawa, Ont., and teaches as an adjunct professor at Eston College, in Eston, Sask.

"Fateful firing of unlikely pastor."

"In an attempt to redeem the time during the early days of the pandemic lockdown, my daughter and I began an ongoing writing challenge, where we took turns coming up with creative writing prompts and compared the stories we each wrote in response. The writing prompt that inspired this story was: 'Write a fictional encounter with a real historical figure.' Her response to this prompt was a story about the brothers Grimm. Mine was The New Parson of Petit-Wasmes."

The day the superintendent arrived at the village of Petit-Wasmes, two parishioners were waiting at the inn to welcome his carriage. They were modest men, stooped with the weariness of poverty. Hans Visser was a foreman in the coal mines, and although down there in the sooty darkness he would have spoken with the bark of a man used to being obeyed, here on the porch of the village inn, welcoming a doctor of theology from the University of Amsterdam, his voice barely lifted above a whisper.

Jozef was the village baker. He had been billeting their parson since his arrival that summer, and it was he who had written the superintendent to come see about him. He was lean, for a baker, and his hands were knobbed, hardened from years of pounding dough.

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.