Lue Palmer has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for For Sale.

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.

Lue Palmer is a writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. They are an editorial board member at Room Magazine and PREE Caribbean Literature and a recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, as an alumni of Clarion West 2021. Lue has also had the joy of attending the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Banff Centre Writers Studio Residency. Published in North America and the Caribbean, their work was shortlisted for the Carter V. Cooper Prize judged by Joyce Carol Oates and the Malahat Review Constance Rooke Prize among others. They are completing their first full length work of fiction, The Hungry River.

"A child's view of anti-Black history in Canada."

"I was raised in rural Canada. Though we were the first Black family the community had ever met, they were fluent in anti-Black slurs and ideas. I tried to make sense of this as a child and later as an adult. Canada is so often made out to be the peaceful, multicultural foil to American racial violence — and the simplified story of the Underground Railroad is central to this identity. So much colonial history is erased by this model image. During the surge of anti-Black brutality and resistance in 2020, I wanted to write to process my experience growing up and to grapple with so much obscured history — to capture what it felt like to be confronted by the peaceful mirage of Canada, while experiencing something much more jarring."

The arrival of our Black family on the outskirts of a tiny Canadian town was documented in the local newspaper — exactly the sort of thing that was of interest to the inhabitants. The old families, those that had built the brick houses and the single tavern, the emptying churches and derelict businesses, viewed themselves with an implacable Northern pride.

My mother had left Toronto looking for peace, unwilling to raise children under the leering threat of city violence; of police and sirens, and the impossibility of putting down roots in a place that was always swallowing people.

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.