Et Cetera, Etcetera, Etcetera by Maureen Ott
CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12
The Ottawa writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist
Maureen Ott has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Et Cetera, Etcetera, Etcetera.
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 Maureen Ott
Maureen Ott lives in Ottawa. Her essays have been published in Banshee, and So To Speak. In 2018, she was shortlisted for Memoir Magazine's MeToo Essay Award contest. In 2013, she co-authored (with Mary Herbst & Maureen Weber) Have Mercy, A Nursing Memoir, published by BookLogix. She is currently attempting a novel.
Entry in five-ish words
"Old writer fears fading words."
The story's source of inspiration
"Sitting at my desk one day while writing, I was frustrated by a word that I could not recall. It was stubbornly hiding out at the edge of my brain, refusing to come out. As usual, I stopped and waited, wrinkling my forehead in frustration. The word finally made it onto the page, but with a letter missing.
'Good grief,' I said.
Then, 'I should write about this.'"
First lines
Women in their eighties can lose things. Keys, glasses, phones. Notebooks. Thingamabobs, whatchamacallits, and the occasional doohickey. Cars go missing in parking lots. Trains of thought leave the station. We lose our way. Old friends, first cousins die. Bits of grey matter shrink in skulls. Words get misplaced in brains. We could use a lost and found bin in there. It would be of great help for old women like me.
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)