Basma Kavanagh has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Bone Shadows.

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.

Basma Kavanagh is a poet, visual artist and letterpress printer who lives and works in Nova Scotia, in Mi'kma'ki. She produces artists' books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. She has published two collections of poetry, Distillō and Niche, which won the 2016 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2019 Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. Her book-length poem, Ruba'iyat for the Time of Apricots, was shortlisted for the 2019 J.M. Abraham Poetry award and won the Book Publishers Association of Alberta's Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry Book of the Year.

"Time, memory, minerals, connection, grief."

"Contemplating the many forms of grief in the years following my father's death."

In late winter, I contemplate a hole in the ground — it's long and deep, with steep, straight sides and an ornate box at the bottom. I visit it a couple of times a week, after work, before bed or in the small hours of the morning, but only in my mind. It's been 13 years since the absurd relocation of my father's body from the house where I grew up — where he lived — to a machine-dug hole in the ground on a high, inland stretch of the town where he was born where his remains, well, remain.

Coffin comes from the Latin, cophinus, for basket, related to the French, coffre, locker or strongbox. My father's coffin gleamed, sleek as a sports car, incongruously luxurious; built, presumably, for looks and performance. However, even the glossiest materials are porous, and every box has weak points at joints and hinges.

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.