CBC Books, CBC’s online home for literary content, together with its partner the Canada Council for the Arts, today announced Will Richter of Vancouver as the winner of the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize. Richter’s story, Just a Howl, was selected from more than 2,300 entries.
As the grand-prize winner, Richter will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and his short story has been published on CBC Books. He will also have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point.
The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize jurors Kim Fu, Norma Dunning and Steven Price, said this about Richter’s story:
“A propulsive interrogation-room story on its surface, Just a Howl slyly raises sharp and timely questions about the state of literature and literary culture. Here, books are simultaneously inert relics of a staid and insular subculture, bastions of beauty and contemplation in a polarized era that may need neither, and —quite literally— violent weapons. The writer questions if ‘She’d been defending metaphor, empathy, introspection, a clever turn of phrase’ as does the reader. The jury found this clever story unexpected, accomplished and darkly funny, and were united in wanting to see what this writer does next.”
Will Richter said, “I was completely floored to hear that my story was this year’s winner. I’ve been following and submitting to the CBC Short Story Prize contest for years, and to win it is hugely exciting and encouraging. I really want to thank all of the judges who saw something in my story among so many others.”
The four runners-up for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize, who will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, are: Clara Chalmers of West Vancouver for Dear M; Helen Han Wei Luo of Vancouver for Eel Broth for Growing Children; Nicholas Ruddock of Guelph, Ont. for Marriage; and Katie Welch of Kamloops, B.C. for Bird Emergent.
CBC Books also announced Annabelle Lehouillier as the winner of the French grand prize for Les notes de novembre. More information is available at ICI.Radio-canada.ca/icionlit.
For more information on the CBC Literary Prizes, please visit CBCBooks.ca.
