Zahida Rahemtulla has made the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Time with Moiz, the Pants and the Curtain.

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.

Zahida Rahemtulla is a playwright and short story writer currently based between Vancouver and Toronto. Her plays have been shortlisted for the Voaden Prize and the Ellen Ross Stuart Playwriting Award and have made the Playwrights Guild of Canada SureFire Lists. She has received a national Dorothy White and Silk Road Artist Award. Rahemtulla worked for several years in Vancouver's immigrant and refugee nonprofit sector in the areas of housing, employment and literacy, and studied literature and Arab crossroads studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. She's currently studying adult education at the University of Toronto.

"Uncle unexpectedly attaches to curtain."

"Being able to grow up in a large family is something I appreciate more as I get older. It's only as these stories fade and the older generation passes on that I realise the beauty that existed in these funny and often absurd episodes, which shaped my siblings and me in meaningful ways."

The Imam was coming to town. And since the Imam was coming, the aunties were coming, and since the aunties were coming, the uncles were coming, and since the uncles were coming, Moiz was coming.

When I was younger, out of all of our outrageous relatives — and I am convinced we had more than the usual quota — it was always Moiz who made me most curious. He was our grandmother's youngest brother from a set of six siblings who stepped in and out of our childhoods over the years of weddings, funerals, and other spectacles that brought everyone to Vancouver.

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.