Conor Kerr, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie to judge 2025 CBC Short Story Prize
The winner will receive $6,000, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books
Conor Kerr, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie will judge the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize.
The CBC Short Story Prize recognizes original, unpublished fiction that is up to 2,500 words in length.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 have their work published on CBC Books.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books.
The 2025 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions until Nov. 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who hails from many prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the poetry collection Old Gods and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award and won the ReLit award the same year.
Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta.
Previously, Kerr was a reader for the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize. He also made the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.
In Prairie Edge, Isidore "Ezzy" Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey is cynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Grey is simply devoted to his distant cousin.
So when Grey concocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzy is along for the ride — one that has devastating, fatal consequences.
Prairie Edge is on the shortlist for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Kudakwashe Rutendo is an actor to watch who fell in love with the stage by performing live poetry. Since then she's starred in feature films Giving Hope: The Ni'cola Mitchell Story and, most recently, Backspot, a drama directed by D.W. Waterson and produced by Elliot Page and Page Boy Productions.
Rutendo was selected as one of TIFF's 2023 Rising Stars and recently named by Hollywood Reporter as a rising star in the 2024 Women in Canada Entertainment issue. She's not just a film star — her theatre credits include roles in the Lost Heroes of Oro at Theatre by the Bay and Vierge at Factory Theatre — all while juggling her coursework at the University of Toronto.
Rutendo was one of the Canada Reads 2024 contenders where she championed the linked short story collection Shut Up You're Pretty written by Téa Mutonji.
Michael Christie has become one of Canada's most acclaimed writers.
His 2011 short story collection, The Beggar's Garden, won the Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His 2015 novel, If I Fall, If I Die, won the Northern Lit Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
His novel Greenwood won the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award (now the Canadian Crime Writing Awards) for best novel, was championed by actor Keegan Connor Tracy on Canada Reads 2023 and was also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Greenwood begins in the year 2038 when most of the world has suffered from an environmental collapse. Yet, on a remote island with 1,000-year-old trees, Jacinda Greenwood, known as Jake, works as a tour guide for the ultra-rich in one of the world's last remaining old-growth forests.
From there, the novel jumps through time as you learn more about Jake, her family and how secrets and lies can have an impact for generations.
The jury will select the shortlist and winner. A panel of established writers and editors from across Canada review the submissions and will determine the longlist from all the submissions. The longlist, shortlist and winner will be announced in spring 2025.
Last year's winner was Vancouver writer Kate Gunn for her story Old Bones.
The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979. Past winners include David Bergen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and Michael Winter.
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If you're looking to submit to the Prix de la nouvelle Radio-Canada, you can enter here.
The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2025 and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
