Roxane Hudon has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Leeward Lessons. 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 until November 1st.

Roxane Hudon is a writer with almost 15 years of experience in cultural journalism and content marketing. She is a contributor to the Montreal Review of Books and is one of the co-hosts of The Rhetorizer, a new podcast about books. She has written for Cult MTL and the now defunct Montreal Mirror and self-published her own zines for a decade. Originally from Montreal, she now lives on Fogo Island where she is freelancing and working on what will hopefully be her first book.

"The ignorance of the urbanite."

"I moved to Fogo Island over a year ago now and the experience of living here has defied my expectations. As a person born and raised in a city, I came here with a lot of preconceived notions of what it would be like living somewhere so remote. I think we assume as city dwellers that we know everything, because we have everything, but I've found the opposite to be true. I hear echoes of my own ignorance when I answer questions from friends and family about my Fogo Island life. I've been asked if people speak English, if there are any shops, if there's anything to do at all. We romanticize life in rural areas, but we also fear it and often belittle it. Leeward Lessons is my comical response to all that, while also being a kind of love letter to the lively people of Fogo Island who have been so warm and welcoming (and whose names I've changed so they don't come knocking on my door… or just barging right in)."

I don't know much.

That's the first thing I learnt when I moved to a remote place marketed as an island off an island. Coasting off your wit for decades doesn't prepare you for grabbing mackerel that's flapping around the bottom of a boat.

My husband and I were walking to the end of our street, a cul-de-sac charmingly named Colonel's Cove. It curled off the main road and followed the coast until it turned back towards the rocky hills. We were headed for a trail that began at the back of someone's house. I wore neon-coloured sandals and had a large book under one arm.

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.