Books by past CBC Short Story Prize winners and finalists published in 2024
Being a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize can jumpstart your literary career.
Need proof? Here are books that were written by former CBC Short Story Prize winners and finalists that are being published this year.
The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Nov. 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
You can submit original, unpublished fiction that is up to 2,500 words in length.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will have their work published on CBC Books.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson
A Way to Be Happy is a short story collection that follows various characters as they try to find happiness. Ranging from mundane to extraordinary, the stories feature everything from a pair of addicts robbing parties to fund their sobriety to a Russian hitman dealing with an illness and reliving his past.
Caroline Adderson is the Vancouver-based author of five novels, including The Sky is Falling, Ellen in Pieces and A Russian Sister. She has also published two short story collections, including the 1993 Governor General's Literary Award finalist Bad Imaginings. Adderson's awards include three B.C. Book Prizes, a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction. She has received the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement.
Adderson is a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prizes. She placed third in the CBC Short Story Prize in 1988 with The Hanging Garden of Babylon. She placed third a second time in 1991 with The Chmarnyk and in 2004, she came in second with Falling.
Perfect Little Angels by Vincent Anioke
Perfect Little Angels is a short story collection set mostly in Nigeria, pondering questions of expectation, desire and duty among its various characters. From boarding school tensions to secret rendezvous between lovers in a hill, the stories explore masculinity, religion, othering, queerness, love and self-expression.
Vincent Anioke was born and raised in Nigeria and now lives in Waterloo. Ont. He has been a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and won the Austin Clarke Fiction Prize in 2021. His work has been featured in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Masters Review and Passages North.
His short story Leave A Funny Message At The Beep was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. His story Utopia was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize twice, in 2021 and 2023.
Our Woolly Bear by Katie Arthur
In Our Woolly Bear, sisters Edie and Lou find a fuzzy caterpillar in their garden named Woolly Bear. The siblings care for the caterpillar until the end of fall — and then Woolly Bear disappears. During the winter, Edie and Lou make lots of memories in their garden and when spring comes, Woolly Bear comes back as a moth.
Katie Arthur is a writer and illustrator living in Nova Scotia. She earned an MA in English Literature from Concordia University in 2011 and previously worked in advertising. Arthur was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize for two consecutive years, in 2015 and 2016.
Bad Land by Corinna Chong
When Regina's brother shows up on her doorstep with his six-year-old daughter after seven years, her quiet loner life is never the same. The longer they stay, the clearer it becomes to Regina that something terrible has happened — and once the secret is revealed, they're sent on a fraught journey from Alberta to the coast of B.C.
Originally from Calgary, Corinna Chong lives in Kelowna, B.C., and teaches English and fine arts at Okanagan College. She published her first novel, Belinda's Rings, in 2013. In 2023, she published the short story collection The Whole Animal which includes Kids in Kindergarten, the winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. Chong is one of the upcoming guests on Bookends with Mattea Roach, CBC's new author interview show.
Midway by Kayla Czaga
Midway is a poetry collection that explores the writer's grief in the aftermath of her parents' deaths. The poems travel from the underworld to London's Tate Modern in a way that's both comforting and disconcerting.
Kayla Czaga is also the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On and Dunk Tank. For Your Safety Please Hold On won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She lives in Victoria and served as the online poetry mentor for Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio.
Czaga was on the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for her story Shared and on the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.
Juiceboxers by Benjamin Hertwig
In Juiceboxers, Plinko is a teenager undergoing basic training before finishing high school. When he moves in with an older soldier, he and the other roommates, people from all different backgrounds, build an unlikely friendship.
After 9/11, the military plans to go to war in Afghanistan so the young men are sent to the battlefields of Kandahar and are forever changed.
Benjamin Hertwig is a writer, painter and ceramist who spent time as a soldier. His book Slow War was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. Based in Edmonton, he owns Paper Birch Books, a second hand bookstore, with his partner.
Hertwig was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in both 2018 and 2016. He is one of the readers for the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize.
Oil People by David Huebert
Oil People weaves together two narratives and timelines to unravel family secrets and the toxic yet powerful nature of oil. The first narrative is the story of a young teen girl named Jade Armbruster in 1987, who is living on the family's oil farm, a deteriorating property built by an ancestor, as her parents decide what to do about the land and their business.
The other story is that of Clyde Armbruster in 1862 who built the oil farm and the rivalry he fell into with his neighbours — the reverberations of which are still felt by Jade and her family.
David Huebert is a Halifax-based writer who has won the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. He is the author of short story collections Peninsula Sinking, which won a Dartmouth Book Award and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and Chemical Valley, which won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize. Huebert is one of the readers for the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize.
What Inspires by Alison Hughes, illustrated by Ellen Rooney
What Inspires is a picture book for ages 6 to 8 about what can happen when you open your mind to creativity and imagination. Three young friends go to the park and it appears as though nothing is happening. But as one seemingly small event leads to another, which leads to another, soon the children find themselves having a day filled with laughter, creativity and possibility.
Alison Hughes is a writer from Edmonton. She has written over 20 books for children and young adults, including Fly, Life Expectancy and Hit the Ground Running, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Writers' Union Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers, longlisted for the 2011 CBC Short Story Prize and her story Funhouse Mirrors was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Ellen Rooney is a designer, artist and children's book illustrator. She also illustrated the picture books Her Fearless Run by Kim Chaffee, Grandmother School by Rina Singh and Dusk Explorers by Lindsay Leslie. She lives in the southern Okanagan Valley, B.C.
Disobedience by Daniel Sarah Karasik
In Disobedience, Shael is a young transfeminine person who risks their safety after entering a relationship with an activist and their love affair is discovered in their prison camp. Shael escapes to a settlement that is attempting to do things differently, with less violence and in more compassionate ways.
Karasik is a writer, playwright and poet from Toronto. They are the author of five books of drama, poetry and fiction including the 2022 poetry collection Plenitude.
Karasik won the 2012 CBC Short Story Prize.
Permission to Land: A Memoir of Loss, Discovery, and Identity by Judy LeBlanc
Permission to Land: A Memoir of Loss, Discovery and Identity is a memoir in essays where LeBlanc details the things she learns about her maternal ancestry following her mother's death. LeBlanc uncovers family secrets while dealing with grief and realizing the impact of erasure in her complex family and what that means for her own identity.
Judy LeBlanc is a writer from Fanny Bay, B.C. She is the author of the short story collection The Promise of Water and her previous book was the novel The Broken Heart of Winter published in 2023. LeBlanc taught creative writing at North Island College for years and she won the Sheldon Currie Fiction prize in 2012.
LeBlanc was longlisted for the 2013 CBC Short Story Prize for her story The Truth About Gravity.
Votive by Annick MacAskill
An exploration of devotion in different forms, Votive is Annick MacAskill's fourth book of poetry. The poems explore the themes of confusion and curiosity, the quest for love as well as how we connect our experiences.
MacAskill is the author of three previously published poetry collections, including Shadow Blight, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in 2022. Her fiction has previously appeared in Canthius and Plenitude. MacAskill lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), in Mi'kma'ki, the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq.
MacAskill was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize.
The Gift Child by Elaine McCluskey
In The Gift Child, a man named Graham Swim goes missing in a fictional Nova Scotia town called Pollock Passage. Questions around his disappearance build as the community of undercover agents and minor criminals piece together odd details like Graham's last sighting, leaving a government wharf with a big tuna head in a delivery bike.
Elaine McCluskey is a fiction writer currently based in Dartmouth, N.S. Her other books include Rafael Has Pretty Eyes and Going Fast (Level D.).
McCluskey longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in both 2019 and 2017.
A Year of Last Things by Michael Ondaatje
A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. Drawing on his personal experiences, this collection goes back in time to all the borders that he's crossed with imagery at once witty, moving and wise.
Ondaatje is a Canadian literary icon. His novels and poetry have earned international acclaim, and he was the first Canadian ever to win the Man Booker Prize — in 1992, for the wartime story The English Patient. Born in Sri Lanka and educated in England, Ondaatje moved to Canada when he was 18 to attend university.
Ondaatje began his writing career in 1967 as a poet, winning two Governor General's Literary Awards for poetry before turning to fiction. Over his career, he's won the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and France's prestigious Prix Medicis.
In 1982, Ondaatje won the CBC Short Story Prize.
This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake by Nicholas Ruddock, illustrated by Ashley Barron
This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake is a picture book that explores various encounters with animals through 15 poems and illustrations. The book encourages its readers to respond with tenderness when coming across those animals. This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake is for ages 3 and up.
Nicholas Ruddock is a physician and writer who has worked in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Yukon and Ontario. Has had novels, short stories, poetry published since 2002 in Canada, U.K., Ireland and Germany. He is the author of the 2021 novel Last Hummingbird of West Chile.
Ruddock has been a finalist for each of the CBC Literary Prizes. He made the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Storm as well as the 2016 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Hummingbirds. Most recently, Ruddock was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize for his story Marriage.
Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster by Damian Tarnopolsky
Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster is a short story collection that transports readers through time and place, from 1980s England to Renaissance France and current Canada. While each story stands alone, connections can be found in the most unexpected ways.
Damian Tarnopolsky is a Toronto-based writer, editor and teacher. His novel Goya's Dog was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada/Caribbean). His short fiction has appeared in The Puritan, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, subTerrain and Audeamus. Tarnopolsky has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize.
In 2007, his story You Guys, featured in Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster, was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize.
Homing by Alice Irene Whittaker
Homing is a memoir about the author's experience of abandoning a busy commuter lifestyle to move to a cabin in the woods with her family. The book also touches upon the journey of repairing her fractured relationship with both herself and the natural world.
Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and environmental leader who lives with her family in a cabin in the woods in Quebec. She is the executive director of Ecology Ottawa and the creator and host of Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. Whittaker has longlisted for all three CBC Literary Prizes. She was on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist and she was also on the CBC Short Story Prize longlist in 2012.
