Michelle Li Zeng has made the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Moribund.

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.

Michelle Li Zeng is a university student and writer from Oakville, Ont. She is a recipient of the 2022 McIlquham Foundation Prize in Literature and her short fiction has appeared in the creative writing anthology Lake Effect 10. Her works often explore themes of identity, liminality and belonging.

"Numbers, grief and unanswered questions."

"The events of the past few years have had me thinking a lot about death, grief and isolation. Moribund was my attempt to work through my own emotions concerning these subjects. There was also a cultural element that found its way into this piece, as I think my experiences with death and mourning are very much connected to my Chinese immigrant heritage.

"For many immigrants and diaspora, death is a logistical and geographical issue. How do you attend the funeral of a loved one who has died an ocean away? How do you visit their final resting place? The reality is that for many people, such a thing isn't immediately (if ever) possible. Not being able to visit loved ones for a final time is a truth that many immigrant and diasporic families have to contend with at some point or another, and there is, I think, a unique kind of grief and even guilt that accompanies that truth. In addition, a lot of Asian families find it difficult to address these kinds of feelings, and as a result, they often go undiscussed. Writing Moribund allowed me to speak about these topics and emotions that have formerly gone unspoken about in my own life.

"Moribund is also inspired by my experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are a lot of unanswered questions within this piece, as I feel that my grief often stems from the unanswerable. As someone with OCD, I don't like uncertainties. I can't help but fear that, if something bad happens, it is because of my own ignorance and lack of control over the situation. Grief and guilt are therefore often intertwined emotions for me, and since I find it hard to articulate my thoughts to other people, grief becomes a lonely experience for me as well. Moribund was therefore also my attempt to translate these difficult feelings into words, and while challenging, I found it to be a very cathartic process."

When I was a kid, I never knew graves could be rented.

I had always thought a person's final resting place was meant to be final. Laid beneath the dirt in perpetuity, never again to be disturbed until the world's end, or at least until the land's original purpose was forgotten and it was sold for redevelopment or something. But in my last year of high school, my family discovered that my grandmother's grave in China had run through its decades-long lease. Leased and not bought: one of the many secrets that my grandfather, now also passed, had kept from us.

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.