Libby Gunn has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Whitefish.

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.

Libby Gunn is the author of Thebacha Trails, an illustrated guide to the landscape near Fort Smith, N.W.T and has written for Up Here, Geist and Legacy magazines and had a stint as a reporter for The Yukon News. She's worked in a small logging and sawmill operation in northern Alberta, and has since been a camp counsellor, museum curator, national park warden and park interpreter. She has canoed and kayaked in the N.W.T, Yukon and B.C., and loves to hike.

"Connection to landscape and family."

"I felt privileged to participate in and witness the trip to Nǫ́reɂǝ and the whitefish harvest. I wrote about it and kept editing and rewriting over many years. It was one of the stories I just had to get out there. Someone recommended I put more of myself in it, which I don't instinctively like to do. I was at the time reconnecting with this place that had so much meaning for me and that story just wove itself in naturally."

For longer than anyone can remember, Sahtúgot'ı̨ne — the people of Great Bear Lake — have harvested lake whitefish each spring.

— Harvested, a dry word that crumbles in your mouth like a mealy potato, that sounds like a threshing machine, or a row of carrots, a word in another language that can't encompass the profound fulfilment, the deep restitution that comes when the net is heavy and fat silverfish slip over the edge of the boat as the dark water rushes by, when the knife cuts into the thick white flesh, scoring it in a familiar rhythm; cannot capture the deep reassurance that comes when fish are drying on a rack in the cold wind off the bay and smoke from the fire below curls over them, gifting them with the taste that speaks of ages

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.