Marites Carino has made the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for It's not Me... It's You. 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.

While in elementary school, Marites Carino got her start writing in her diary. An activity she used to enjoy, until her mom broke the locks. Years later, she picked up the pen again as the dance editor of the Montreal Mirror for more than a decade. With her background in dance and broadcast journalism, she combines her passion for dance and film through her award-winning shorts and interactive installations that have been shown internationally. She thrives on sharing people's stories, and particularly those who use art to overcome obstacle. She is fond of dancing slowly to fast music, biking with no hands, dish washing karaoke and writing about herself in the third person.

"Last call Berlin."

"Two hours after this encounter, I had to catch the plane back to Montreal. Once on board, alone, I felt obliged to stifle my hysteria as courtesy to the passenger beside me. Since I write grants, to keep myself occupied during the flight, I basically wrote this piece in my head as if I were pitching a short film. Ping-ponging between mentally creating a script and half-watching Street Gang: How we got to Sesame Street on the in-flight entertainment system, I managed to get through the seven hours. In mentally writing this short essay, I later realized it was a way to distance myself from the event and allow me to process by focusing instead on narrative arc and diction.

"Although the piece mainly centres on the incident in Berlin, writing it made me realize how much, as visible minorities, we become desensitized to day-to-day microaggressions and train ourselves to shrug them off. Actually, after my flight, because I was in distress, a stewardess offered me wheelchair service to the baggage carousel. While waiting, a man was standing directly in front of me wearing a large backpack that repeatedly kept bumping into me. The flight attendant said, 'Excuse me sir, could you please be careful with your bag?' He turned around, looked down at me in my chair, and didn't budge an inch. The stewardess excused him, shaking her head, 'Oh, he must just be stressed and tired.'

"I debated whether or not to include that scene at the end. Adding it would show that racism is universal. I don't want people to think this is an anti-Berlin piece, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work without destroying the essay's architecture. So I took it out."

Dear Berlin,

We need to talk.

Although you're the European city I've visited the most, I've never really been that into you. Surprising because you remind me so much of my beloved Montreal. You're so multicultural with your language snippets whizzing through the air. Your scent of electric creativity buzzes through the streets and your flair for laissez-faire shows in your splashy, thrown-together fashion. Bikes dart through traffic and jumbles of pedestrians. You're gritty, yet bubbling with art at every turn. You check off a lot of my boxes. I want to like you. I should like you. But let's face it: deep down, I'm not really feeling 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.