Alice Irene Whittaker has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Coyote and the Wren.

The winner of the 2021 CBC Nonfiction 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 Sept. 22 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 29.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Oct. 31.

Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and environmental communications leader. She has been published in national and international publications, including the Globe and Mail and Permaculture Magazine. She made the CBC Short Story Prize shortlist in 2009 and the longlist in 2014. She was selected for a fellowship for the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and received a Bill and Melinda Gates Innovation Award. In 2021, she received a literary grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec for a creative nonfiction book she is currently writing. Whittaker lives in a cabin in the woods in Quebec.

"Human and coyote mothers bare teeth."

"When my beautiful son had a life-threatening experience on a snowy day, I waded through the messy terror of quick, critical decisions about how to care for him and keep him safe. The natural world, of which we humans are a part, is always a thread woven through all of my writing, and it was a mother coyote who was an additional source of inspiration for this tender story. My son's mortality, a coyote mother, a song that I sing and my own surefooted but experimental motherhood all came together to inspire The Coyote and the Wren."

Coyote mothers pull back their lips and bare their teeth, to pull the cinnamon fur from their own bellies. With the clumps of fur firmly and painfully extracted, they line the mud-baked walls of their dens to keep their babies warm.
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I call my two-year old son Wren. He flits and sings like a bird, and he is young and joyful like I imagine Wrens to be.

When he eats something delicious, he closes his eyes to savour the taste. Mmmmm, mama. That is delicious. Eyes stay tightly closed while he takes joy in the food, in the act of being alive.

My adult mind — repeatedly tracing over those worn grooves between worries about the obsolete past and the unknowable future — learns from watching him. He gently and persistently teaches me about the joy of today.

The winner of the 2021 CBC Nonfiction 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 2022 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open for submissions until Oct. 31, 2021. The 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.