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All The King's Men by Paul Hetzler

CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12

The Quebecer writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist

Image | Paul Hetzler

Caption: Paul Hetzler is a writer who lives in western Québec. (Marie-Line Bourdy)

Paul Hetzler has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for All The King's Men.
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 Paul Hetzler

Paul Hetzler delights in connecting people with nature through humorous essays. After becoming a certified arborist in 1996, he began writing for journals on tree-related topics and branched out from there. Today he writes about nature for Thousand Islands Life, The Québec Farmers' Advocate, and The Saturday Evening Post. He's published three books of fun-filled nature essays and his work has appeared in venues as diverse as Highlights for Children magazine and the British medical journal The Lancet. Paul lives in western Québec with his remarkably patient wife. He just completed a novel and a short-story collection.

Entry in five-ish words

"Redeeming shattered bones, shattered bonds."

The story's source of inspiration

"When I was five, I suffered a major spinal injury due to my father's violent assaults. Timely medical care was withheld, followed by decades of self-punishing hard work later on. This eventually led to severe debility and pain with only one way out: radical spinopelvic fixation. Before my father passed, we got a rare and precious chance to heal old wounds. Just recently, I was offered a way to reverse some of the physical damage. As the long-awaited surgery date drew near, I wrote this as a reflection on the nature of healing.
"In one way or another, we all get broken by life, and no one can ever put us back the way we were. Healing is always a miracle, and yet, the pieces will never fit perfectly again. We can decide to resent the cracks that are left behind, or we can choose to let light shine through them. It's a daily practice, and it takes backbone."

First lines

According to the Mayo Clinic, the four leading causes of spinal injuries are vehicle crashes, falls, violent assaults and contact sports. It seems I was an overachiever, even at age five, because in one instant, my backbone got crunched by an assault, a fall, and a sports injury that happened at the same time. I bet hardly anyone's gotten three of the top four simultaneously. Not to brag or anything.

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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