Meet the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize readers
These writers and editors determined the longlist for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize
Every year, CBC Books enlists the help of established writers and editors from across Canada to read the thousands of entries submitted to our prizes.
Our readers compile the longlist, which is given to the jury. You can meet the readers for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize below.
The jury for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize, comprised of Eternity Martis, David A. Robertson and Merilyn Simonds, then selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the longlisted selections.
The CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist will be unveiled on Sept. 7. The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 14 and then the winner will be revealed on Sept. 21.
The CBC Nonfiction Prize winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point and have their work published on CBC Books.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and will have their work published on CBC Books.
The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is currently accepting submissions until Nov. 1, 2023 and the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
Here are the 12 writers who served as readers for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.
Mark Abley
Mark Abley is a nonfiction writer, poet and journalist. His books include The Organist, Spoken Here, Watch Your Tongue, The Prodigal Tongue, Conversations with a Dead Man: The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott and several poetry collections and children's books. He grew up in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but now lives in Montreal.
At 22 years old, Abley took a three-month trek with his friend across the Hippie Trail, from Europe to South Asia. It was the spring of 1978 and many of the places Abley visited would soon become inaccessible to foreign travellers. Using the notebook from his trip, Abley brings his vibrant experience back to life in his memoir Strange Bewildering Time, from dancing in a Turkish disco to clambering across a glacier in Kashmir, conjuring a region during a time of historical change.
Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr
Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr is a Nigerian Canadian writer, speaker and the founder of She Roars, a global community empowering women. She was included in the Guardian's list of the 100 most inspiring women in Nigeria. I Am Because We Are is her first book.
I Am Because We Are documents how Akunyili-Parr's late mother, Dora Akunyili, faced down misogyny and corruption in Nigeria. The nonfiction book is a look at how Dora Akunyili took on fraudulent drug manufacturers after their products killed millions, including her sister. And when Akunyili becomes an elected official, she faced death threats and an assassination attempt. Akunyili-Parr's mother suffered for her beliefs, as did her marriage and six children.
Omer Aziz
Omer Aziz was born in Toronto and was educated through scholarships at Queen's University, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School. He has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, New York magazine and the Washington Post. He has worked for politicians such as the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau as well as the country's foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland.
In Brown Boy, Aziz describes the complex process of creating an identity as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy on the outskirts of Toronto, that fuses where he's from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be. Through his personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him.
Eli Baxter
Eli Baxter is an Anishinaabay Knowledge Keeper originally from Ogoki Post First Nation who belongs to the Marten Falls Band. He is a residential school survivor and certified Ontario teacher. Baxter won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction for Aki-wayn-zih.
Baxter is among the last fluent speakers of Anishinaabaymowin, an Anishinaabay language. In Aki-Wayn-Zih, Baxter looks at the history of the Anishinaabayg and their relationship with the land since the beginning of their life on Turtle Island. He brings together thousands of years of history with his personal story, growing up on the land, trapping and fishing, and his experience being forced to attend residential school.
Cody Caetano
Cody Caetano is a Toronto-based writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. His memoir Half-Bads in White Regalia is his first book and it was longlisted for Canada Reads 2023.
Half-Bads in White Regalia traces Cody Caetano's unique upbringing living in a rural house with his siblings after his parents split up and left them behind — his mother trying to discover her Anishinaabe roots after finding out her Sixties Scoop origin story and his Portuguese immigrant father drifting aimlessly.
Tamar Glouberman
Tamar Glouberman's first book Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life is a memoir combining the excitement of whitewater with the search for self-forgiveness. As a long-time wilderness guide, Glouberman has always loved the storytelling aspect of her job. Eventually that love brought her to the University of British Columbia's creative writing MFA program, where she wrote Chasing Rivers as her thesis project. Glouberman currently guides in the Great Bear Rainforest, which happens to be the location of the next book she's working on.
Chasing Rivers takes readers headfirst into the life of female whitewater guide, Glouberman, who has traversed some of the most difficult rafting rivers in North America, including in the Grand Canyon. At home on the water, Glouberman's love for rafting and paddling brought her community, friendship, romance, increasing self-confidence to overcome challenges and unfortunately, tragedy in the form of a fatal accident for one of her passengers. Navigating her guilt and love for the water, Glouberman's memoir asks deep questions about how to make a meaningful life, the potential for self-sacrifice and self-forgiveness and what it means to chase adventure around every corner.
Michael Hingston
Michael Hingston is a writer and publisher from Edmonton. He is the author of the books Let's Go Exploring and The Dilettantes. He also co-authored Harnarayan Singh's memoir One Game at a Time. He has been featured in Wired, National Geographic, the Atlantic and the Washington Post. He is a co-founder of Hingston and Olsen Publishing.
In Try Not to Be Strange, Michael Hingston tells the story of Redonda, a micronation that was transformed from an uninhabited island into a fantastical and international kingdom of sci-fi novelists, poets, publishers and Nobel Prize nominees. This book — part literary history, part travelogue and part quest narrative — is about what happens when bibliomania engulfs more than just the shelves.
Harrison Mooney
Harrison Mooney is a writer and journalist of West African descent, raised in B.C. As a journalist, he has written for the Vancouver Sun, the National Post and Maclean's. He is currently based in Vancouver.
Invisible Boy is a memoir detailing Mooney's experiences of displacement and racism from childhood to adulthood. As a transracial adoptee to a white evangelical family, Mooney was harassed for his racial identity and forced to adhere to fundamentalist teachings in his church. Reflecting on his past, Mooney writes of his journey out of internalized anti-Blackness and his reunion with his biological mother 25 years later.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Lorri Neilsen Glenn's forthcoming hybrid memoir, The Old Moon in Her Arms, will be published in 2024. Her most recent book is Following the River: Traces of Red River Women, a work of creative nonfiction about her Indigenous grandmothers and their contemporaries. Glenn was Halifax's first Métis Poet Laureate. She is professor emerita at Mount Saint Vincent University and teaches in University of King's College MFA program in creative nonfiction. She lives in Mi'kma'ki.
Following the River: Traces of Red River Women looks into Glenn's family history and her Cree-Métis ancestry via the tragic death of her great-grandmother. But it also poses a central question: why don't we know more about First Nations and Métis women in history? Following the River reclaims the lives of women whose stories have disappeared, collecting prose, poetry and 19th century documents.
Josiah Neufeld
Josiah Neufeld is a journalist who grew up in Burkina Faso. His writing has appeared in the Walrus, Hazlitt, the Globe and Mail, Eighteen Bridges, the Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Sun, Utne Reader, Prairie Fire and the New Quarterly. He lives in Winnipeg.
In the memoir The Temple at the End of the Universe, Neufeld reflects on his childhood as the son of Christian missionaries based in Burkina Faso. This experience showed him how people's actions are influenced by spiritual and religious convictions and how faith can combat feelings of personal powerlessness. The Temple at the End of the Universe calls for a new spiritual paradigm in the face of the climate crisis.
Laura Trethewey
Laura Trethewey is an author and journalist. She was one the recipients of the Writers' Trust of Canada Rising Star award in 2020. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Atlantic and the Walrus. She is the author of the book The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea.
The Deepest Map chronicles the global efforts to map the oceans' floor and obtain an accurate reading of the vast underwater terrain. Documenting Inuit-led crowdsourced mapping in the Arctic and a Texan's quest to become the first man to dive to the deepest point in each ocean, this book explores the world's oceans and fraught questions around deep sea mining.
Njoki Wane
Njoki Wane is a professor at the University of Toronto and a recognized scholar in the areas of Black feminism and African spirituality.
Wane's From My Mother's Back reflects on her childhood living in Kenya where her parents owned a small coffee farm. It explores her African identity and how her upbringing and close relationship with her mother ensured her sense of self. The book later follows her to Canada, as she pursues her academic dreams and experiences what it means to be a Black African woman in a predominantly white society.
