Random Acts of Walking or What An Australian Cockatoo Taught Me by Kelly Watt
CBC Books | Posted: September 12, 2024 1:59 PM | Last Updated: September 12
The Ontarian writer is on the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist
Kelly Watt has made the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Random Acts of Walking or What An Australian Cockatoo Taught Me.
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 Kelly Watt
Kelly Watt's poetry book, The Weeping Degree was published this August by Wild Rising Press of Colorado. The chapbook was a finalist in the San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Poetry Mesa Chapbook Contest (2023). Four poems from the manuscript were published in HA&L: Hamilton Arts and Letters Magazine. She has published two books — the gothic novel Mad Dog (Doubleday Canada, 2001) and the nonfiction title, Camino Meditations (HSE, U.S., 2014). She has lived in five countries but now makes her home in Ontario with her partner and four chickens.
Watt has been longlisted three times for CBC Literary Prizes: in 2019 for the CBC Nonfiction Prize for Mexican Parade and for the CBC Short Story Prize in both 2015 and 2018 for two different versions of Fall of the High Waters.
Entry in five-ish words
"The magic of random walking."
The story's source of inspiration
"A magical experience."
First lines
About the Power of My Thoughts
At thirty-three years old I had what they used to call a nervous breakdown. Overnight, my head was besieged with the fiercest thoughts. Words danced on the page, then whole paragraphs swooned. I could no longer read and had to quit my job. I separated from family and friends. It was 1989 and I was living in Toronto in a 1940s brownstone walkup on Bathurst Street between Wong's Jamaican Takeout and the new Korean Buddhist Church.
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)