Ann McDougall has made the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Haunted.

The winner of the 2022 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. 15 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 22.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open for submissions until Oct. 31, 2022.

Ann McDougall is a writer, graphic designer and museum consultant living in Toronto. Originally from Northwestern Ontario, she holds a BA in theatre from York University and spent nearly 20 years working in Canadian museums. She is a former Ontario Arts Council grantee as both a writer and a performing storyteller.

"It's about ghosts … sort of."

"When you work in a museum you hear a lot of ghost stories. Complete strangers blurt them out to you almost daily. That fascinates me. Why do old places call to mind spooky things that happened to us? Or, more often, spooky things that happened to a friend of a friend? What is it about stepping into history that makes us long to feel haunted?"

"There's a boy here, of course."

It was my first day. I'd been hired to help with the holiday season rush at a small Toronto museum. That morning, as the city was hushed by the year's first snowfall, I'd taken the subway, and then a bus, and then walked down a steep hill, half-slipping on the slick pavement. The museum was located in a tiny nature preserve tucked alongside an expressway. It was home to a crumbling 19th century brewery, a paper mill and two historic houses, one yellow and one grey.

The winner of the 2022 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 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 2023 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open for submissions until Oct. 31, 2022. The 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2023 and the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April 2023.