Murgatroyd Monaghan has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Island 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 until November 1st.

Murgatroyd Monaghan's writing has recently been published in Chapter House Review and is forthcoming in Ex-Puritan. Within the last year she has been a finalist for the Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction, the TCK Prize for non-fiction and the Newfound Prose Prize. Murgatroyd has devoted her adult life to motherhood and is pursuing writing now that her children are older. She is working on several book-length projects. A former asylum-seeker, Monaghan was raised in Ontario.

"Newcomer's identity transforms throughout childhood."

"Like many newcomer kids of mixed descent, I wanted what other kids wanted of me — to have one single, safe category to place myself into that would claim me. My accent and my hair were the fascination and fodder of amused schoolchildren when I first arrived. They had never seen anything like me. My accent was a wild mix of East London cockney and Orkney Scots with a Gaelic-Gujerati vocabulary, although racially, I am Celtic/Egyptian. I think my hair spent my childhood more confused than I was about what it should be. I went through so many phases in search of my identity, and changing or accepting my syntax and my hair were always paramount in my quest to belong. My (adoptive) father is of Anicinabe descent, and later, as a ward of the child welfare system, I was also raised by Greek and Jamaican families, so plenty of my culture and dialect included these influences — but especially from my father's side.

"As I got older, my accent and my Celtic/North African hair were less 'funny' for kids my age, and more 'other.' Bullying was a regular part of my daily life. Just as in my story, I would spend hours straightening my hair and practicing the Canadian accent and vocabulary, usually through literature and popular music. I missed the Isle constantly. I felt like an imposter here. Children naturally search for something solid to cling to as they sail through their own internal and external changes and refugee/newcomer children have a hard time knowing what is safe — and culturally acceptable in the new place — to latch onto. However, children who are raised by the system also often learn not to latch onto anything as it might be gone tomorrow. This paradox created confusion in me. I wanted to tell the story of what it is like for newcomer children of mixed identities to try to reckon with all of this.

"Another thing I wanted to highlight in Island Girl is trauma, especially intergenerational trauma, and how it affects children searching for an identity of their own. My mother fled with me in search of a better life after experiencing some unthinkable things, and it can be difficult if not impossible for newcomers fleeing violence to access the culturally — and emotionally-sensitive therapy that they need. As a result, she experienced severe mental health issues and was not able to raise me, and many harms were passed on. My new father also carried intergenerational baggage, having been adopted out to a white family in the early 1970s as was common practice at the time, and he was not able to support my mother or me either. Ultimately, trauma has difficult symptoms and outcomes and I didn't want my story to sugarcoat those.

"Like many children with developmental and intergenerational PTSD, I learned the secret of detaching my mind from my body. I wrote Island Girl with this in mind because I wanted a reader to feel what that was like. Also, many who have experienced violence also perpetuate violence, even against those of their own communities, and I did. The lure of privilege can be very strong, and children seek safety. Whiteness and citizenship are safe. Part of this story was learning to forgive myself for the harm I caused others as a youth, as well as to forgive my parents for the harm they caused me too. It is part of the work I am doing to break the traumatic cycle in our family."

There is the sound of a swing. Damp sand sits crystallized curiously against my teeth. An upturned garbage can leaks its contents over my skin. I wonder why I cannot smell it. I notice the smell, but I cannot smell. Just as I cannot taste the sand in my mouth or hear the swing that is creaking above me. The sensation should scare me, but it doesn't. Nothing scares me. I feel nothing. My favourite rainbow crop top is flipped up to my shoulders from when they grabbed it, I know it is, but my hands are not mine to move. I am floating somewhere off in the distance.

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.