B.C.'s Louie Leyson wrote about Filipino overseas workers in Canada — and won the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open for submissions until Mar. 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open until March 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
You can submit original, unpublished nonfiction that is up to 2,000 words. There is no minimum word requirement. Nonfiction includes memoir, biography, humour writing, essay (including personal essay), travel writing and feature articles.
To inspire those entering the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize, here is the story behind the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize winner, Louie Leyson.
Louie Leyson has won the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize for Glossary for an Aswang.
The B.C.-based writer will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point.
Their winning piece was published on CBC Books. You can read Glossary for an Aswang here.
Leyson's work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and National Magazine Awards. Their writing has appeared in Catapult, The Malahat Review, Palette Poetry, The Rupture, Nat. Brut and Plenitude.
Glossary for an Aswang was inspired by research they conducted around Filipino overseas workers. "Not enough people in Canada acknowledge the visible labour of Filipino migrant workers around them," they told CBC Books.
Not enough people in Canada acknowledge the visible labour of Filipino migrant workers around them.- Louie Leyson
Glossary for an Aswang began as an exercise in a writing workshop, run by Griffin Poetry Prize winner Billy-Ray Belcourt.
"He had the same assignment for all of us to write in the form of a glossary. You may have noticed that the essay is in this experimental glossary format. He provided us with the examples of other writers who have similarly mixed the creative nonfiction genre with the format of a glossary," Leyson told CBC Books.
"I thought at the time my glossary wasn't as focused. It didn't have the focus on overseas Filipino workers that the final product did. After the seminar, I went back to it and I thought this format is cool, but I also wanted it to be about something. I did a lot of research on Filipino overseas workers for different projects and I ended up returning to that research."
After the workshop, Leyson let the piece sit for a year before returning to work on it again.
"I kind of made a Frankenstein basically, the final product is like a thing inside of different parts of my writing from different things, but organized under the form of a glossary. Maybe that comes through a little in the actual work because it's very nonlinear and it's a bit jagged and fragmented. Like literally cut out from different things and put together like a bit of a giant puzzle."
Each fragment intimately situates the reader within the loneliness, isolation, injustice, violence and even death faced by those who leave their families in search of a better life. The writer demands that you look, and not look away.- 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize jury
The fragmented structure is what appealed to the jury.
The 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize jurors were Eternity Martis, David A. Robertson and Merilyn Simonds.
"The stories within this story are painfully fragmented — much like, the writer laments, the histories, families and individual memories of the Filipino people, suppressed by colonization and dispersed across a globe dependent on Filipino domestic workers. Each fragment intimately situates the reader within the loneliness, isolation, injustice, violence and even death faced by those who leave their families in search of a better life. The writer demands that you look, and not look away. Each word perfectly chosen and irresistibly placed, Glossary for an Aswang is the kind of story that you read and immediately say, 'This is the one,'" the jury said in a statement.
The jury selected the winner and the shortlist from a longlist of 38 writers that was compiled by a team of 12 writers from across Canada.
LISTEN | CBC Nonfiction Prize juror Merilyn Simonds on Ontario Morning:
Leyson's winning entry was selected from over 2,000 entries.
The win was a big surprise for Leyson, and validation for their work over the years.
"I'm happy, stunned and grateful to win this award," they said. "It's all very dreamlike. A disbelieving joy. I want to hug my younger self and tell them there's disbelieving joy on the horizon.
Part of the joy of winning for Leyson comes from the prestige this year's jury brought to the award.
"I'm especially grateful that my work was selected by an incredible jury of established authors in Canada—Eternity Martis, David A. Robertson and Merilyn Simonds, each with an abundant, distinguished body of work to their name," they said. "There isn't a greater thrill than to have my work acknowledged by those whose work I already admire."
The other four finalists are Finnian Burnett of Princeton, B.C. for That Poor Girl; Christine Lowther of Tofino, B.C. for Environmental Services; Barbara Joan Scott of Calgary for Black Diamond; and Kelly S. Thompson of Barrie, Ont. and currently based in Colorado Springs, Colorado for The Edge of Change. They will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Maxime Jolivel won the Prix du récit Radio-Canada 2023 for Histoire de pêche.
The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979. The 2022 winner was B.C. writer Susan Cormier for her essay Advice to a New Beekeeper. Other past CBC Literary Prize winners include David Bergen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and Michael Winter.
For Canadians interested in other CBC Literary Prizes, the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open. The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
