Simone Witton has made the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Ice Drift.

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.

Simone Witton is an editor and aspiring writer living in Ottawa. She has a BA in English literature and art history from McGill University. Her career as an editor of art books began in London, England, where she lived for 12 years before returning to Ottawa to start a family. A mother of two kids, Witton enjoys writing fiction and nonfiction in her spare time.

"Motherhood, adolescence, worry, memories, hope."

"My daughter's struggle with depression and self-harm over the last couple years has gripped and overwhelmed our family. It has led me to reflect on my own adolescence and the similarities between her experiences and those of my teenage years.

"Writing the piece in the middle of winter after a skate on Ottawa's Rideau Canal, I was inspired by the frozen landscape and feelings of bleakness, but also of endurance and hope in anticipation of warmer times ahead. Ice destroys, but it can melt to allow for rejuvenation. Emotions and memories are likewise solid and fluid; they can seem fixed before they drift through the mind, reformulating, renewing. Ice can also be precarious, reminding me of the fragility of my daughter's mental health.

"I can never skate without thinking about Joni Mitchell's song, River. Her verses about escape, the desire to flee from a situation or emotional state, are always on my mind when I'm on the ice. Skating also makes me think of the blades that my daughter uses to self-harm, of the tracks on the ice and the linear scars on her body. These in turn evoke the idea of lineage and the lines or threads connecting a mother to her children – not just viscerally but through stories and memories, interweaving the past and the present."

I stare down at the ice, etched and scarred with blade marks, as I skate along the Rideau Canal trying to lose myself in the 12 bars of Tommy Tucker's Hi-Heel Sneakers. The temperature is mild, but the sky is a mouldy grey, the damp creeping cruelly through my puffer jacket. One of these gashes in the ice might trip me; it has happened before, leaving me sprawled red-faced on the frozen canal.

Just last night we found her with her arms raw and beading crimson onto her pink satin sheets.

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.