CBC Books, CBC’s online home for literary content, together with its partners the Canada Council for the Arts and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, today announced Chanel M. Sutherland of Montreal as the winner of the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize. Sutherland’s story, Beneath the Softness of Snow, was selected from over 2,300 entries.
As the grand-prize winner, Sutherland will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and her story has been published on CBC Books. She will also receive a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
The 2022 CBC Short Story jurors, Omar El Akkad, Casey Plett and David Bergen, said this about Sutherland’s story:
“Beautifully and carefully told, Beneath the Softness of Snow is a story about attachment, detachment, and painful choices, centered on a woman who must leave her own children to make money caring for the children of her employer. It is a difficult thing to write in the second-person, but here the result is a quiet intimacy, where the reader is made complicit in the reality of how privilege works. There is a deep sadness that runs through this story, a palpable grieving, but also a sense that, regardless of the circumstances, one can always hold fast to the steadying anchor of love.”
Chanel M. Sutherland said, “When I first learned that I won, I could not believe it. I have been following the CBC Short Story Prize since I was 19 and winning was always this distant dream. To receive this news was a very surreal and emotional moment. This story is an important one for me because it’s one of the first times that I am exploring — through writing — what my mother must have gone through during those first moments in Canada, away from everything she knew. Away from her children. I wanted to explore not just the sacrifice and pain of such a decision, but also hope. I knew it was a risk writing in second-person, but it was the only way the story wanted to be told. The fact that it resonated with these very notable judges is a reward in itself. I am forever grateful!”
Sutherland is a two-time CBC Literary Prize winner, having taken home the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her story, Umbrella.
The four runners-up for the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts. Those finalists are Susanna Cupido of Sackville, N.B. for Me Against Jim Bailey; Jeremy Elder of Toronto for Desire Path; Nancy Hui Sulaiman of Windsor, Ont. for Dinner With Friends; and Anna Ling Kaye of Vancouver for Nesting Season.
For more information on the CBC Literary Prizes, please visit cbcbooks.ca.
