Yohani Mendis has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Gary Fisher.

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.

Yohani Mendis is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian emerging writer. She holds a BA in international relations from the University of Toronto and works at the literary publication Brick magazine. Her most recent essay appeared in The New Quarterly and her first published poem is in Best Canadian Poetry 2021. She currently resides in Toronto.

"Recovering one thing, losing another."

"The incident in the essay was a turning point in my life. Our 20s can be a turbulent period in one's life, fraught with risk, self-discovery and questionable choices. I wanted to capture that liminal space, interconnected here with a first-generation immigrant's sense of disorientation and loss."

On the night I discovered my bicycle stolen off the bike ring, I should have let it be a write-off.

Five years of living in Toronto's downtown core without incident had made me careless — a fact I came face to face with when I found my bicycle gone, with only a front wheel left to greet me. Most of the people who passed me by on my hour-long trudge home side-stepped the girl muttering to herself. They would have not seen the tears, caught in the downpour of September rain.

At the green age of 23, the idea that I could track down a bicycle thief in a city of three million seemed wholly plausible. And so, when the following night I found myself gasping over the photo of my bike posted up for sale on Kijiji's used bicycle ads page, it felt like the universe had answered my pleas for help. There was my stolen bike, under the caption, "21 Speed Gary Fisher Mako Hard tail 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 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.