Ellen Adams has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Are You Still Dead This Summer?

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.

Ellen Adams is a queer writer of essays and fiction and a singer-songwriter working in folk and country traditions. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and the Kenyon Review Online and has been listed as notable in Best American Essays. Her work has been supported by grants and residencies from Elizabeth George Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Hedgebrook, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and the Banff Centre. These days, she's writing new songs, developing a novel and working on a nonfiction book about language learning. She lives and works in Montreal.

"Visitations, riots, denial and grief."

"After a dear friend's death by suicide, a mutual acquaintance talked about being visited in a dream by our late loved one. Envious of this visitation, I went back to the city where we both once lived, hoping she might reappear. In this essay, I try to make sense of my friend's absence and my own denial that she's gone."

I need to tell you some things. Your friend came for a visit. We sat on a curb in the city I lived in after leaving New York. The night market's noise, thick as the humidity: clamourous, pushy, roiling. She said you'd appeared to her in a dream. You told her you'd been in a cage. You wanted out, you needed out, and now you were free. Everything went quiet when I heard her words. I felt deep mistrust of this indirect source. Tell me: should I believe her?

I was jealous that she was the one you visited. I am jealous for your presence: a longing, faulty logic. Dead people don't un-die.

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.