Ruth by Gordon Portman
CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12
The Regina writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist
Gordon Portman has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Ruth.
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 Gordon Portman
Most of Gordon Portman's writing experience has been connected to professional theatre; his practice has developed on stages, in classrooms, and in rehearsal halls from the west to the east coasts of this land. He has taught at Brandon University, and at the Universities of Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and Regina. He is scheduled to serve as a writer in residence at the historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver and will be virtual writer-in-residence for the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild in the winter of 2024.
Portman's story Ashes and Sky was shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Entry in five-ish words
"Why I Stayed with Him."
The story's source of inspiration
"On one level, the piece is the main answer to a question or comment I've encountered, I don't know how many times, from friends and family and strangers, when I've talked about my years of being married to someone with multiple active addictions."
First lines
When I'm talking about my marriage, the fact that we're two men is at the core of everything — two men who have gone through, and bring with us, everything associated with being gay boys, teens, adults, and now elders through the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and into the present — which, for living gay men of our age, is a "present" in just about every sense of the word.
The second thing is that my husband has spent most of our life together with deep roots in multiple active addictions, and recovering from trauma that prepared the soil for those addictions.
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)