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Driving in a Snowstorm by Izza Farhan

CBC Books | Posted: April 3, 2025 1:30 PM | Last Updated: April 3

The Toronto-based writer is on the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize longlist

Image | Izza Farhan

Caption: Izza Farhan is a writer living in Toronto. (Rusafa Rahman)

Izza Farhan has made the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Driving in a Snowstorm.
The winner of the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts(external link), a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity(external link) and their work will be published on CBC Books(external link). The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts(external link) and have their work published on CBC Books(external link).
The shortlist will be announced on April 10 and the winner will be announced on April 17.
If you're interested in other CBC Literary Prizes(external link), the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems from April 1-June 1.
The 2026 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January.

About Izza Farhan

Izza Farhan lives in Toronto and is a soon-to-be civil engineering graduate from the University of Toronto. With a long love for reading and storytelling, she started her writing journey after taking a creative writing course in the summer of her final year. This is her first literary milestone. She has many more stories she wants to tell and is currently working on outlining her first two novels. In her free time, when she's not writing, she loves to take pictures with her film camera.

Entry in five-ish words

"The snow will eventually melt."

The short story's source of inspiration

"I wanted to capture the struggling relationship between generations in an immigrant family, specifically through the lens of grief. As a daughter of immigrant parents, I think sometimes we fail to empathize with our parents and understand the loneliness they suffer adjusting to a new country, one that doesn't always welcome them with open arms."

First lines

Heartless child. Takes every opportunity to drive the car. But because it is his own father who needs a ride, and because he is so repulsed by his own flesh and blood, it takes him an hour to wear a sweatshirt and then another hour to use the bathroom. And by the time he is in the car, Atiq in the passenger seat, Hamza is on the phone talking to Darren or Derek or who knows what that boy's name is, maybe it is James, one of those old high school friends that, unlike him, went to university and had discipline. The way he exaggerates his vowels, his arrogant way of laughing, is screwing a hole into Atiq's mind. The key is in Hamza's hand, the car is getting cold, Atiq is shivering, and the key is still in Hamza's hand, and he isn't starting the car because he is talking to James? Darren? Derek?

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 2,300 entries. 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 Conor Kerr, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie.
The complete list is:

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