Kelly S. Thompson has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Dear CAF.

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.

Kelly S. Thompson is a writer and retired military officer with an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and is a PhD candidate in literary studies at the University of Gloucestershire. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Chatelaine, Maclean's, the Globe and Mail and several anthologies. Thompson's memoir, Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces, made the Globe and Mail bestsellers list. Her next memoir will be released in 2022. She teaches creative nonfiction at the University of King's College.

"A military Dear John letter."

"I spent almost a decade in the Canadian Armed Forces and often joked it was my longest standing and most demanding relationship, because the military is a lifestyle, not a job. When I was medically released from the Forces after an injury and experienced a career of harassment, it felt like going through a breakup with someone I no longer liked, much less loved.

"When I think back to being 18 — the age I was when I enrolled — I realize how idealistic I was, with firm lines between good and bad, helping and hurting. It's only been with education about colonialism and intersectionality that I've come to see how I played a role in the marginalization of others. Writing about this helps me understand. We only need to turn on the news to see how military policy and masculinized culture are hurting women. So this is a story of first loves starting and ending — with all the melodrama that entails."

Back when I was 18 and signing on that dotted line that outlined my commitment to you, my dearest Canadian Armed Forces, I never thought we would arrive here, waving the proverbial white flag with my Dear John letter in response to your own. You prefer memos, short and curt, stuffed full of acronyms that mean nothing and everything, to be deciphered with a decoder ring undiscovered in my box of store-brand cereal.

Me, well, we've always known I have a flair for melodrama. Love letters and farewells are now my creative bread and butter. Come to think of it, a passion for adjectives and similes should have been our marriage's warning shot. Doomed.

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.