Alister Thomas has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Missing and Presumed Drowned. The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 14 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 21.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions.

Alister Thomas is a former journalist and nonfiction writer. Bruno, his story about a grizzly bear encounter, grizzly biology and history and remembering and misremembering, was the nonfiction winner at the 2022 Eden Mills Writers Festival. Thomas is also an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of King's College in Halifax. His book in progress, Reading Water — Rivers, Wilderness, and a Mysterious Disappearance, is part environmental reporting, part wilderness guide and part memoir. Ultimately, it's about rivers of joy and rivers of tears.

"Father's ashes follow disappeared son."

"I've been haunted by my kid brother's disappearance for 45 years."

Deep in the heart of the North, north of the sixtieth parallel, triangulated by the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and British Columbia, nestled in the Mackenzie Mountains, lies the valley of the South Nahanni River — a treasure trove of mysterious legends, mostly prospectors moiling for gold who disappeared more than a century ago.

However, there's one disappearance there, often called Canada's Grand Canyon, that I know to be true: he was a twenty-year-old guide, leading a gaggle of teenagers down the Nahanni on a wilderness canoe trip. Malcolm went for a walk, alone, to view Virginia Falls and scout the river below, where three years before he had capsized. Malcolm, my kid brother, never returned from his walk.

The winner of the 2023 CBC Nonfiction 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 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open until Nov. 1, 2023 at 4:59 p.m. ET. The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2024 and the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April 2024.