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The Memory Tree by Laura Anderson

CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 2:00 PM | Last Updated: September 12

The Victoria-based writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist

Image | Laura Anderson

Caption: Laura Anderson is a writer based in Victoria. (Amy Anderson)

Laura Anderson has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Memory Tree.
The winner of the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts(external link), a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity(external link) and have their work published on CBC Books(external link). The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts(external link) and have their work published on CBC Books(external link).
The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 19 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 26.
If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes(external link), the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Nov. 1. The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.

About Laura Anderson

Laura Anderson is a slow-writer and tarot reader who feels most at home by the sea. She is a lifelong student of cinema and memoir who writes personal essays and poetry in the fine company of a small writing group in Victoria. Current work explores haunted houses, shipwrecks and the ghostly stories of the settler psyche she sees emerging in the mists of the west coast. Other themes include mothering, navigating loss and healing, ancestral narratives and stories told by the elements. She holds degrees in psychology and English, and over the years has occasionally published poetry in various Canadian journals. Her favourite activity of all time is swimming in the ocean with family.

Entry in five-ish words

"Embracing loss in the forest."

The story's source of inspiration

"A persistent sense of multiple hidden dimensions in the forest that has become more complex, subtle and meaningful over my lifetime. A desire to explore how both the comfort and danger present in the wilderness are linked with my experience of the loss of a child."

First lines

In the 60s and early 70s the old island highway was a narrow, two-lane ribbon of crumbling pavement banked by trees, trees, and more trees. It curved through mountains and valleys and followed the lines of Vancouver Island's eastern shores from Victoria to Campbell River. Four or five times a year my parents, sister and I would leave Victoria to take this route up island, to Parksville, where we would turn onto the smaller, narrower Alberni highway out to the west coast.

Image | CBC Nonfiction Prize

Caption: The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize shortlist will be announced on Sept. 19 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 26. (Ben Shannon/CBC)

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 1,400 submissions. A team of 12 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the list.
The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Michelle Good, Dan Werb and Christina Sharpe.
The complete longlist is:

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