Aldona Dziedziejko's poetic reflections on land and loss wins 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize
The Alberta-based writer spoke to Mattea Roach about her life, literary inspirations and her big win
Aldona Dziedziejko has won the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her essay Ice Safety Chart: Fragments.
She will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Dziedziejko's essay Ice Safety Chart: Fragments was published on CBC Books.
On Bookends with Mattea Roach, Dziedziejko discussed her winning essay, which aims to answer the question of why she decided to move to a Northern Canadian hamlet in the Tlicho region of the Dene.
"The answer is quite complex, the more I thought about it," she told Roach. "In the more complex layering that followed in the essay, I asked the reader to consider several things. Is loss the end or beginning of something new? Can we learn from the regenerative cycles of nature?
"What is the meaning of death? And how can we talk about trauma lineage, not just our own, but of those around us that we pick up as well? And are we connected through our pasts?"
Dziedziejko recently left her post as a guest and teacher in the North. She has lived on Canada's West Coast, and before that, on the northern coast of Poland. She is now based in Clearwater Country, Alta., and delights in spotting wild horses and being a mom.
Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in CV2, subTerrain, The Capilano Review, Fiction Southeast, PRISM international and the Globe and Mail. She recently won the Room magazine's Short Forms Contest and the Arc Poetry magazine's Award of Awesomeness.
This year's winner and finalists were selected by a jury composed of Michelle Good, Dan Werb and Christina Sharpe.
"With unflinching directness, evocative prose, and an ambitious structure, Ice Safety Chart: Fragments draws readers into a narrative of loss and place that plays out across unsteady terrain. This is a world where 'geography is a foreign text,' which eludes every effort to take shortcuts towards real understanding and where true self-knowledge builds as slowly and inexorably as the permafrost," the jury said in a statement.
The piece paints the land as inextricably tied to loss: it is where it happens, it is the place to which we flee after we experience it, and it is the canvas which transforms loss into a deeper kind of knowledge.- 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize jury
"Through the intersecting stories of a woman's suicide by exposure to the Arctic wilderness, the long and brutal history of Inuit repression and genocide at the hands of the Canadian state, and a heart-wrenching personal tragedy, Ice Safety Chart: Fragments explores loss as a starting point rather than an end unto itself.
"In doing so, the piece paints the land as inextricably tied to loss: it is where it happens, it is the place to which we flee after we experience it, and it is the canvas which transforms loss into a deeper kind of knowledge. In this concise and complex work, the mysteries of the Arctic wilderness become spiritually transformative, the cold becomes a source of support, and the ice, in all its seasons, thicknesses, and variegated forms, becomes a stabilizing force that holds the world — and a person — together.
"Ice Safety Chart: Fragments is an uncommon accomplishment: experimental and beautifully written, it guides readers to the revelation that the landscape of ice isn't empty, it is many landscapes haunted and living and perhaps also, a pathway back to self," they said.
In Ice Safety Chart: Fragments, Dziedziejko describes her own experiences moving to a remote fishing village in order to "dream, write and escape" after experiencing major loss.
"Transformations are hard-won and I didn't anticipate ancient wounds to move through me before I could experience life anew with the help of the unknowable, amazing and harsh arctic landscape," she told CBC Books.
Once there, she tackled a set of questions — "What shows up when you dig deep? Does the landscape speak? What secrets does it hold?" — and learned that we're connected by our topography, environment and ancestral experiences.
"This is an ode to a place like no other on earth: where the ice and snow are blank pages awaiting our thoughts and where dogs howl songs into the wind."
This is an ode to a place like no other on earth: where the ice and snow are blank pages awaiting our thoughts and where dogs howl songs into the wind.- Aldona Dziedziejko
Growing up in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, to Dziedziejko, the Canadian North, "represents both the epitome of freedom as well as shades of familiar socio-economic issues."
"I invite readers to visit inside my mind for a time, but also to take in this essential part of our country where people live so differently. Also, eco-anxiety drives my need to consider permafrost, the changing Indigenous communities and what it means to be a woman, a guest and a settler at this point in time."
Dziedziejko joins a long list of writers who have won CBC Literary Prizes, such as David Bergen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and Michael Winter. The Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979.
As a first-time entrant to the CBC Nonfiction Prize, Dziedziejko, who is predominantly a poet, was surprised by her win. "This is an honour that I am lucky to share with many writers I admire and it's such a wonderful community to be a part of. I write in order to communicate — to reach out to the wide world of readers out there and I'm so glad that through this prize I will get to do this on a vast scale," she said.
This is an honour that I am lucky to share with many writers I admire and it's such a wonderful community to be a part of.- Aldona Dziedziejko
The win is a big step for the young writer and has given her much validation. "Winning the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize has finally made me validate my identity as a writer. Most importantly, I am grateful to the jury for understanding what I was trying to say, and for the opportunities that this recognition will allow to help me finish my writing projects," Dziedziejko said.
The other four finalists are Ted Bishop of Edmonton for On Not Knowing Cree, Alison Pick of Toronto for Not in Their Names, Evelyn N. Pollock of Coldwater, Ont. for Is Life a Tossed Salad? and Emi Sasagawa of Vancouver for Dad's the Word.
They will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
The longlist was compiled by a group of qualified editors and writers from across Canada from more than 1,400 submissions.
The readers come up with a preliminary list of approximately 100 texts that are then forwarded to a second reading committee. It is this committee who will decide upon the 30 entries that comprise the longlist that is forwarded to the jury. The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections.
Works are judged anonymously on the basis of the participant's use of language, originality of subject and writing style. For more on how the judging for the CBC Literary Prizes works, visit the FAQ page.
Last year's winner was B.C. writer Louie Leyson for their essay Glossary for an Aswang.
The 2024 winner of the Prix du récit Radio-Canada is Pascale Millot for her story Variante de la normale.
For Canadians interested in other writing competitions, check out the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is currently accepting submissions.
The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
The Bookends interview was produced by Erin Balser and Daphne Santos-Vieira.
