Meg Warren has made the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for In Defence of the Pine Beetle.

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.

Meg Warren is an environmental journalist living in Jasper, Alta. She recently finished a writing and environmental studies degree at the University of Victoria and is now learning to navigate the world of freelance writing. Her writing focuses on human relationships with wild places, which she sees as becoming more important as climate chaos continues to change the places we call home. Though she mainly writes creative nonfiction, her poetry can be found in the Antigonish Review.

"We don't always know what's best."

"In Defence of the Pine Beetle was inspired by a distrust in colonial environmental protection methods. Due to decades of fire suppression by Parks Canada Jasper, Alberta is thickly overgrown with lodgepole pine trees. When the mountain pine beetle swept through Jasper, I suspected that the Park's management plan might recreate that same issue and fail to allow Jasper's forests the renewal that they so desperately need.

"A long conversation with a former Banff superintendent confirmed my suspicion and gave me insight into the frustrating reality of working within a flawed framework to try to heal the ecosystems that we have protected to death."

In 1977, a red storm swept through southern Alberta. The pine forests of Waterton Lakes National Park knew the mountain pine beetle, a native insect that killed a few weak lodgepole pines each summer before freezing to death in the winter. In the spring of 1977, though, the forest flipped. The healthy, green forest became a sea of dry, dead, red pines with only an occasional green spruce or fir to hint that the woods harboured life.

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.