Senseless by Laura Mensinga
CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12
The Ontarian writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist
Laura Mensinga has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Senseless.
The winner of the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
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, 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 Mensinga
Laura Mensinga is an art director and graphic designer. Originally from Toronto, she relocated to the woods of Eastern Ontario in 2019. She has always used writing as a creative outlet, a way to explore how we relate to and disconnect from our surroundings. Long, long ago Laura was accepted into a writing program at York University, yet she decided to go to school for fashion design instead. This has since been a debated choice.
Her piece Slash was also longlisted for the CBC Creative Nonfiction prize in 2016.
Entry in five-ish words
"Lost scent dampens the experience."
The story's source of inspiration
"Over the last decade, I lost my sense of smell. In doing so, it became apparent how scent is intrinsically tied to memory, evoking past moments or individuals with frightening clarity. I felt as though I was losing a form of time travel, and part of myself along with it. This piece explores the idea that the connections we form and losses we endure are universal experiences. At one point in time or another, we all deal with altered plans and shifting realities."
First lines
The shift began slowly, imperceptible at first.
As though I had a glass jar full of marbles I had been collecting since the beginning. Varied sizes of perfect spheres holding twisting forms and layered universes, each one distinct. Yet every so often, someone would glide past and remove one — gingerly plucking it from the vessel and slipping the small solid thing deftly into their pocket. The adjustment was so minor, that it went undetected until abruptly one day the container was empty.
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:
- The Memory Tree by Laura Anderson (Victoria)
- The Sensibilities of Dogs by Antoinette Bekker (Medicine Hat, Alta.)
- The Swell That Follows by Bianca Bernstein (Montreal)
- On Not Knowing Cree by Ted Bishop (Edmonton)
- Awl by John Blackmore (Ottawa)
- My Father's Four Funerals by Lizz Bryce (Toronto)
- Quiz by Aaron Chan (Vancouver)
- Ice Safety Chart: Fragments by Aldona Dziedziejko (Rocky Mountain House, Alta.)
- The Archaeologist's Last Visit by Machenka Eriksen (Victoria)
- Teddys to Manhattan by Kelsey Gilchrist (Toronto)
- The Ferris Wheel by Julie M Green (Kingston, Ont.)
- A Quieter War by Batya Guarisma (Vaughan, Ont.)
- Green for Home, Always by Theresa Harold (Vancouver)
- All the King's Men by Paul Hetzler (Val-des-Monts, Que.)
- The Next Breath by Shana Hugh (Vancouver)
- Mitigoog Call Me Home by Tay Aly Jade (Winnipeg)
- Talking for a Living by Zilla Jones (Winnipeg)
- A Love Letter to the Super Tenant by Marianne Mandrukiak (Montreal)
- Senseless by Laura Mensinga (Stone Mills, Ont.)
- Glass Eyes by G. Robert Morrison (Montreal)
- Et Cetera, Etcetera, Etcetera by Maureen Ott (Ottawa)
- The Weight of the Crown by Deanna Patterson (Regina)
- Not in Their Names by Alison Pick (Toronto)
- Is Life a Tossed Salad? by Evelyn N. Pollock (Coldwater, Ont.)
- Ruth by Gordon Portman (Regina)
- Dad's the Word by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
- Tomorrow, The Next Day, and the Day After That by Kelly S. Thompson (Colorado Springs, U.S.)
- The Weight of a Gaze by Salina Jane Vanderhorn (Deep River, Ont.)
- Random Acts of Walking or What An Australian Cockatoo Taught Me by Kelly Watt (Rockton, Ont.)
- Eyeball Tacos by Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez (Edmonton)