Jessica Bloom has made the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for 6 Months to Live.

The winner of the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and win a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point. 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 April 12 and the winner will be announced on April 18.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until May 31.

Jessica Bloom has fiction published in Pithead Chapel and Sand Journal, both excerpts from a novel-in-progress. She was second runner-up for Prism International's Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction. Other writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Elle, McSweeney's, Vice, Playboy and The Phnom Penh Post. She has a BFA in creative writing from the University of Victoria, an MA in media studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and MA in counselling psychology from Yorkville University. She lives in Toronto.

"Artists in a parallel universe."

"This story is inspired by the difficulty of making art and the difficulty of not making art. It's also a proposal for the government, but not a great one. It's also an interesting question for dinner parties, gallery openings, or the lull between acts — would you rather do hard labour for six months and get six months to do anything you want, or never make art ever again?"

I wasn't going to be like my mother, painting landscapes in the basement at night, hiding wet canvases behind the washing machine. My father knows. I know he knows. And some days I wonder why he hasn't reported her. One call and they'd come to take her away, her and her tornadoes of rage, but then he'd have to cook his own dinner. She is a good cook, less good at painting landscapes. I could draw better evergreens in my mashed potatoes by grade five, just being honest.

The winner of the 2023 CBC Short Story 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 Artscape Gibraltar Point. 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 Poetry Prize is currently open until May 31, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2024.