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, have announced the finalists for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize.
The finalists are:
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Lyle Burwell of Sudbury, Ont. for Highballin’
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Brenda Damen of Calgary for Gibson
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Sarah Fulton of Oshawa, Ont. for But Not to Call Me Back or Say Goodbye
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Julia Jenkins of Nanaimo, B.C. for I Am Aani Littlecrab
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Julia Zarankin of Toronto for Black-legged Kittiwake
The stories were selected from more than 2400 entries received from across Canada. The public can read the shortlisted stories on CBCBooks.ca. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on April 22.
The jurors for this year’s CBC Short Story Prize are David Bezmozgis, Alix Hawley and Rawi Hage.
David Bezmozgis is the author of the story collections Natasha and Other Stories and Immigrant City and the novels The Free World and The Betrayers. He has been nominated multiple times for the Governor General’s Literary Award and made the shortlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Immigrant City.
Alix Hawley’s first novel, All True Not a Lie In It, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won both the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her first book, the story collection The Old Familiar, was longlisted for the ReLit award. She won the 2017 CBC Short Story Prize for Witching and was also a CBC Short Story Prize finalist in 2012 and 2014. Her story Pig (For Oma) won the 2014 Bloodlines memoir contest. Her most recent book is the novel My Name is a Knife.
Rawi Hage’s first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year. It was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. His most recent novel, Beirut Hellfire Society, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Rogers’ Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
In addition to a cash prize of $6000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Grand Prize winner will receive a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will be published on the CBC Books website. The four other finalists will each receive $1000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and will be published on CBC Books.
For more information on the CBC Literary Prizes, please visit CBCBooks.ca.
