Five finalists have been chosen from more than 1400 entries from across the country
The Grand Prize winner, announced Sept. 26, will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
CBC Books, CBC’s online home for literary content, together with its partners the Canada Council for the Arts and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, have announced the finalists for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
The finalists are:
- On Not Knowing Cree by Ted Bishop (Edmonton)
- Ice Safety Chart: Fragments by Aldona Dziedziejko (Rocky Mountain House, Alta.)
- Not in Their Names by Alison Pick (Toronto)
- Is Life a Tossed Salad? by Evelyn N. Pollock (Coldwater, Ont.)
- Dad’s the Word by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
The entries were selected from more than 1,400 submissions received from across Canada. The public can read the shortlisted texts on cbcbooks.ca. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on Thursday, Sept. 26.
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize jurors are Michelle Good, Dan Werb and Christina Sharpe.
Michelle Good is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good’s debut novel, Five Little Indians, won the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award and it also won Canada Reads 2022. Good's latest book Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous life in Canada is a collection of personal essays that explore a wide range of issues affecting Indigenous people in Canada today. Truth Telling was shortlisted for the Writers Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy Writing.
Dan Werb is a writer and social epidemiologist. He is the author of City of Omens, which was a finalist for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 2022, Werb won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure. The Invisible Siege traces the history of the virus family and the scientists who went to war with it, as well as the lessons learned and lost during the SARS and MERS outbreaks.
Christina Sharpe is a Toronto-based writer, professor and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University. Her previous book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Guardian and was a nonfiction finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her latest book Ordinary Notes won the Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Awards for Nonfiction.
The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will be published on the CBC Books website. The four other finalists will each receive $1000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and will be published on CBC Books.
Visit cbcbooks.ca for the complete CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist or for more information on the CBC Literary Prizes.
-30-
About CBC Books
Home to Canada Reads, Bookends with Mattea Roach, The Next Chapter, the CBC Literary Prizes and Canada Writes, CBC Books connects Canadians with books, encouraging a shared love of reading and writing. For book news, writing challenges, reading lists, book recommendations and more, visit cbcbooks.ca.
About CBC/Radio-Canada
CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada's national public broadcaster. Through our mandate to inform, enlighten and entertain, we play a central role in strengthening Canadian culture. As Canada's trusted news source, we offer a uniquely Canadian perspective on news, current affairs and world affairs. Our distinctively homegrown entertainment programming draws audiences from across the country. Deeply rooted in communities, CBC/Radio-Canada offers diverse content in English, French and eight Indigenous languages. We also deliver content in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Punjabi and Tagalog, as well as both official languages, through Radio Canada International (RCI). We are leading the transformation to meet the needs of Canadians in a digital world.
About Canada Council for the Arts
The Canada Council for the Arts is Canada’s public arts funder, with a mandate to "foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
The Council’s grants, services, initiatives, prizes, and payments contribute to the vibrancy of a creative and diverse arts and literary scene and support its presence across Canada and abroad. The Council’s investments foster greater engagement in the arts among Canadians and international audiences.
The Council’s Public Lending Right (PLR) program makes annual payments to creators whose works are held in Canadian public libraries.
About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is a learning organization built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and creative development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become the global organization leading in arts, culture, and creativity across dozens of disciplines. From our home on Treaty 7 territory in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to inspire everyone who attends our campus – artists, leaders, and thinkers – to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to society through cross-disciplinary learning opportunities, world-class performances, and public outreach.
For further information, contact:
Kaari Sinnaeve, CBC PR
kaari.sinnaeve@cbc.ca
