The writers, who are the only African nominees, were nominated for their short stories, namely, Utopia, Dark, and How to Make a Friend.
By Hope Ibiale
Vincent Anioke, Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze, and Zilla Jones have been announced as some of the writers longlisted for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.
The writers, who are the only nominees of African descent, were nominated for their short stories, namely, Utopia, Dark, and How to Make a Friend. Other short stories on the list include Absence by Courtney Baird-Lew, The Artist by Nina Dragicevic, How to Build a Tomb by Lindsay Foran, Inventory by Jenny MacDougall, The Baby by Kailash Srinivasan, and many more.
(Read also: 6 African Writers Shortlisted for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize)
The longlist, selected from 2,300 submissions, will be pruned to a shortlist which will be announced on the 12th of April, while the winner will be announced on April 18, 2023. The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, and their work will be published in CBC Books. They will also attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published in CBC Books.
Vincent Anioke is a Nigerian-Canadian software engineer and writer. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Split Lip Magazine, Carve, and Pithead Chapel. Anioke has also won the Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze is a Canadian-Nigerian-American who loves writing about Chinooks, failure, and Igbo masquerades. Her work has been longlisted for the International Commonwealth Short Story Prize twice. In 2021, her story Dark won the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. Mirabelle is currently working on her debut novel.
(Read also: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Set to Release Children’s Picture Book, Mama’s Sleeping Scarf)
Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer and writer. She has won The Malahat Review’s Open Season Fiction Award, PRISM International’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, the gritLIT Festival Short Story Award, and many other prizes. Her stories have been published in Prairie Fire, Room, The Puritan, Malahat Review, PRISM International, FreeFall, and The Fiddlehead. She is currently working on her sophomore novel, Blackface.
The CBC Short Story Prize, considered one of Canada’s prestigious literary awards, celebrates excellence in writing and is open to all Canadian citizens and permanent residents. The competition is a unique opportunity for emerging writers to have their work recognised and published. It is also a chance for readers to discover the wealth of new talent across the country.
This year’s judges include Kim Fu, Norma Dunning, and Steven Price.