Krista Collier-Jarvis has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for A Micmac Memoir. 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.

Krista Collier-Jarvis is a PhD Candidate in English at Dalhousie University and an assistant professor in English at Mount Saint Vincent University. She grew up in a trailer park on the border between Truro and the Millbrook Reservation. Her writing seeks to navigate the complexities of identity formation as a mixed race Mik'maw/Settler woman growing up in poverty. Her academic research addresses Indigenous literature, horror, American literature, pop culture and how difficult histories are represented in museums.

"Being Mi'kmaw, living in poverty."

"The place where I grew up has an untold history of Indigenous/Settler relations and forced displacement. It wasn't spoken about by the residents nor did the local media take up the topic. We were the area that the rest of town seemed to ignore, and while we had moments of solidarity living together, we were still a contact zone that embodied the complexities of Indigenous/Settler experiences living in poverty. When I was a teenager, the residents in our trailer park were issued notices that we had to relocate because the land belonged to Millbrook. We were given a short timeframe, no financial assistance, but the offer of a very small settlement if unable to relocate our homes. My family was lucky and managed to find a small piece of land outside the town, but we were the minority. Most residents were not so lucky and had to give up their homes for the small, promised settlement. For over a decade afterward, the homes stood empty on the land and became marked by violence, often being broken into or burned. To this day, this story remains untold by the town and its resident, so I wanted to finally share it."

The dusk sets in fast because my road faces north to south; the towering trailers — okay, towering for a young girl — hide the sun most of the day. I get the light the longest when I stand in the middle of the road.

The shadows creep from the safety of the shoulder up onto the concrete, reaching out to me, promising an inescapable embrace, and I let it.

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.