The Weight of a Gaze by Salina Jane Vanderhorn
CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12
The Ontarian writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist
Salina Jane Vanderhorn has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Weight of a Gaze.
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 Salina Jane Vanderhorn
Salina Jane Vanderhorn is a writer and award-winning designer. She was raised in the tiny nuclear town of Deep River, Ont. where her favourite toys were books. Her love for art and words sent her to Toronto where she obtained an advanced diploma in graphic design with honours from Humber College in 2011. She began her career designing for iconic brands in Toronto. In 2022, she returned to Deep River to soothe her nervous system and explore her pull to writing. In 2023, she began creative writing courses at the University of Toronto. She now writes essays and manuscripts while designing.
Entry in five-ish words
"I created my own rejection."
The essay's source of inspiration
"This essay began as an emotional response to a series of fashion industry horror stories being published on the internet. The stories were generating entertainment shock value that I understood to be harmful. The industry is not simply hard to navigate — it changes how you understand yourself. Your reality begins to distort into standards that can only harm you. As I extrapolated my experience, I could finally see the depth of the damage: I helped create those standards."
First lines
I know only one story. The story of a body that is flat and only round in places fit for desire. Clothing must hang and drape, not fold and bubble. Woven fibres are to glide across you without any interruption from the body.
The drip of resentment for my body floods my brain with all the clothing that doesn't fit right.
"I don't think I hate my body," I mutter to my therapist over a morning zoom call. I am not convincing her. There's a sink in me while I stare into the screen. The weight on my shoulders that sinks to the centre of my chest when a friend shows up to dinner in an outfit I would love to be in, but can't.
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)