Megan Gallant has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for How to be a 25-year-old Girl. 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.

Megan Gallant is a freelance writer who loves telling stories about everyday people doing not-so-everyday things. Currently living in small town Maple Leaf, Ont., she recently completed her MA in critical and creative writing from the University of Gloucestershire. As an avid traveller who has lived in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, she believes place to be a defining character in every story. Her own favourite place will always be in her hammock, between the trees and near the water, with a coffee, a book and her family goldendoodle in her lap. She is currently working on her first new adult novel.

"Lost in a quarter-life crisis."

"I wrote this at a time in my life when I was struggling to decide what I wanted to do next. I had been travelling for months and didn't have a plan for when I returned to Canada, yet I found myself craving the familiarity of home. But, as a 25-year-old who had always been on the move, I felt ashamed and like a failure to move into my mother's house. According to every sit-com, the mid-20s are supposed to be the best, most carefree years of our lives and we're expected to have everything figured out. So, if there's ever a time that we're feeling anything but carefree, we think we're failing and that we're the only ones. And yet, I think the reality is we spend so much time comparing ourselves to others and trying to convince them that we're exactly where we want to be, we fail to realize they're probably feeling the exact same way.

"I wrote this by compiling experiences lived by me and several friends as we try to figure out exactly what being a 25-year-old girl looks like. It's written in a series of instructions to comment on how we often have this blueprint in our mind of what we think life will be like when we reach a certain age. It looks different for everyone on the outside, and yet, on the inside, I think we all (at least sometimes) feel a little lonely, desperate, insecure, and, most of all, completely lost."

Know where you're going but don't move too fast.

Pack your suitcases and tell everyone you'll never return. Tell yourself you'll never return. Move to a city across the country with only a couple boxes full of everything you own and some things you don't. Like your mom's old flannel. Clean out the room you grew up in and give one last cuddle to the family dog.

Don't sleep in past 9:30. Make organic coffee in a press and eat avocado toast on whole wheat bread. Don't add too much salt.

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.