Five finalists have been chosen from more than 2,700 entries from across the country
The Grand Prize winner, to be announced Nov. 21, 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 Poetry Prize.
The finalists are:
- There is no neutral way to say I was fourteen by Cicely Grace (Vancouver, B.C.)
- 吃苦 (Eat the Bitterness) by Emily Yiling Ma (Burnaby, B.C.)
- Palimpsest County by Rachel Robb (Toronto, ON)
- Northern Childhood by Eleonore Schönmaier (Ketch Harbour, N.S.)
- The Killer and the Harpist by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria, B.C.)
The entries were selected from more than 2,700 submissions received from across Canada. The public can read the shortlisted poems on cbcbooks.ca. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on Thursday, Nov. 21.
The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize jurors are Shani Mootoo, Garry Gottfriedson and Emily Austin.
Shani Mootoo is a writer and visual artist born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad who currently lives in Ontario. Her debut novel was 1997's Cereus Blooms at Night. Her novel Polar Vortex was shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her other books include Cane | Fire, Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab and Valmiki's Daughter. In 2022, she won the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award for fiction writers in the middle of their career.
Garry Gottfriedson is from Kamloops, B.C. He is strongly rooted in his Secwépemc (Shuswap) cultural teachings. In the late 1980s, Gottfriedson studied under Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull and others at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of 13 books, including Skin Like Mine and Clinging to Bone. Gottfriedson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) in 2023. His most recent poetry collection is The Flesh of Ice.
Emily Austin is an Ottawa-based writer. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. Her debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, was long-listed for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Ottawa Book Award. Austin's second novel is Interesting Facts About Space. She is also the author of the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers.
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 Poetry Prize longlist or for more information on the CBC Literary Prizes.
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About CBC Books
Home to Canada Reads, Bookends with Mattea Roach, The Next Chapter, and the CBC Literary Prizes, 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
416-200-5346
