2 Waterloo writers make 2025 CBC Short Story Prize shortlist

Writers Vincent Anioke, Trent Lewin, Dorian McNamara, Emi Sasagawa and Zeina Sleiman have made the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize shortlist. 

Their nominated works are:

• Love is the Enemy by Vincent Anioke (Waterloo, Ont.)
• Ghostworlds by Trent Lewin (Waterloo, Ont.)
• You (Streetcar astatine Night) by Dorian McNamara (Halifax)
• Lessons from a peach by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
• My Father's Soil by Zeina Sleiman (Edmonton)

The victor volition beryllium announced connected April 17. They volition person $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a two-week penning residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

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The remaining 4 finalists volition each person $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.

All 5 finalists had their enactment published on CBC Books. You tin work their stories by clicking connected the links above.

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The longlist was selected from much than 2,300 submissions. Submissions are processed by a two-tiered system: the initial submissions are screened by a speechmaking committee chosen for each class from a radical of qualified editors and writers across the country. Each introduction is work by 2 readers.

The readers come up with a preliminary database of astir 100 submissions that are past forwarded to a 2nd speechmaking committee. It is this committee who will determine upon the 30ish entries that comprise the long list that is forwarded to the jury. 

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This year's finalists were selected by a assemblage composed of Conor Kerr, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie. They volition besides prime the winner.

Works are judged anonymously connected the ground of the participant's usage of language, originality of taxable and penning style. For much connected however the judging for the CBC Literary Prizes works, visit the FAQ page.

The shortlist for the French-language competition has besides been revealed. To work more, spell to the Prix de la création Radio-Canada.

Last year's victor was Vancouver writer Kate Gunn for her story Old Bones. 

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If you're funny successful different penning competitions, cheque retired the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is presently accepting submissions. The 2026 CBC Short Story Prize will unfastened successful September and the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize will unfastened successful January. 

Get to cognize the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize English-language finalists below.

Love is the Enemy by Vincent Anioke

Vincent Anioke is simply a Nigerian Canadian writer and bundle engineer. His abbreviated stories person appeared successful SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Masters Review and Passages North. He won the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Perfect Little Angels, his debut abbreviated communicative collection, was released successful 2024 and shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize. CBC Books named Anioke arsenic 1 of the 2024 writers to watch. He is presently moving connected a novel.

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Anioke is nary alien to CBC Literary Prize success. His story Leave A Funny Message At The Beep was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize and his story Utopia was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize twice, in 2021 and 2023.

Why helium wrote Love is the Enemy: "I was reflecting connected the dual quality of emotion aft an aggravated idiosyncratic acquisition — how emotion tin exert a unit that runs antagonistic to our beloved's soul, oregon body, oregon agency, oregon desires, arguably for amended oregon worse. I saw the tendrils of that duality tangled up successful each kinds of emotion that specify our lives: parental, patriotic, romantic, spiritual — and became funny successful a tightly woven communicative that explored and hyper-focused connected these threads.

"The CBC Short Story Prize has been connected my radar since 2021, and I was particularly arrogant of this story, however it feels profoundly Nigerian with its absorption connected roots and civilization and tradition, profoundly Canadian with its absorption connected migration and assimilation and redefinition, and profoundly cosmopolitan with its themes connected love, loss, and belonging."

• Read Love is the Enemy

Ghostworlds by Trent Lewin

Trent Lewin is simply a writer of East Indian origin, an migrant to Canada and a clime advocate, that has been published by Boulevard, december, Grain, FreeFall and Ex-Puritan. He has besides been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Lewin is hard astatine enactment connected 2 novels and galore abbreviated stories, each of which question to blend the literate crossed a assortment of genres. He has a inheritance successful acquisition and engineering/science and lives successful Waterloo, Ont. 

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In 2014, Lewin was a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize for his story Saad Steps Out. More recently, helium made the CBC Short Story Prize longlist in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Why helium wrote Ghostworlds: "There is simply a mentation that we don't brushwood beingness from different planets due to the fact that the beings determination person created mendacious realities successful which they find a amended beingness than their existent ones. Virtual worlds that are expansive and joyous and that gully them in, truthful that they don't person to woody with world and frankincense ne'er propulsion outwards. I often wonderment if we are heading connected that way too, caught up successful integer worlds alternatively than existent ones, ever looking for alternate realities to the 1 successful which we live. I find that a spot disheartening but besides a root of anticipation if we tin harness that powerfulness successful a affirmative way. I consciousness similar we cling to those virtual worlds implicit Ontario winters, erstwhile we seldom spot our ain neighbours!

"This communicative pulled astatine maine aboriginal on, but I rewrote it respective times to find a mode to bring a reasonably analyzable connection to life. It's 1 of those stories that I cognize I wanted to archer but went done galore iterations to get to a constituent wherever it resonated with me. I retrieve having a amusive infinitesimal successful a java store wherever I felt that it had yet landed, and knew close distant that I wanted to stock it. Having been shortlisted and longlisted by the CBC before, it conscionable felt similar the benignant of communicative that would resonate."

• Read Ghostworlds

You (Streetcar astatine Night) by Dorian McNamara

Dorian McNamara is simply a queer transgender writer presently surviving successful Halifax. Originally from Toronto, helium graduated with a BA successful science from Dalhousie University. He is presently moving connected his archetypal caller arsenic good arsenic publishing the originative newsletter Dear You. 

Why helium wrote You (Streetcar astatine Night): "Growing up successful Toronto, I've ever loved the streetcars. When I travel location to sojourn my family, I find I americium often connected the streetcar. There's ever a batch of memories tied to them, but aft coming out, I got anxious that radical who knew maine earlier would admit maine then. Part of maine wanted them to retrieve maine and spot maine now, but different portion of maine was acrophobic of however radical I utilized to cognize would react.

"I took an instauration to originative penning people successful university and the prof recommended each of america taxable to the CBC Short Story Prize. I ended up submitting a abbreviated communicative for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize and decided I wanted to taxable different 1 this year."

• Read You (Streetcar astatine Night)

Lessons from a peach by Emi Sasagawa

Emi Sasagawa is simply a settler, migrant and queer pistillate of colour, surviving and penning connected the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. Sasagawa's debut novel Atomweight was selected by CBC Books as 1 of the works of Canadian fabrication to work successful the archetypal fractional of 2023 and dubbed by The Tyee arsenic "a propulsive exploration of maturation and becoming." The caller is an invitation for readers to bespeak connected their intersectional identity, done privilege and power, and oppression and marginalization and reimagine however we whitethorn instrumentality up abstraction and clasp abstraction for others.

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Sasagawa was besides a finalist for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her essay Dad's the Word.

Why she wrote Lessons from a peach: "I was six years aged erstwhile my gramps died of cancer. I retrieve struggling to marque consciousness of it — each my assumptions astir information and permanence painfully contradicted by his glaring absence. As a biracial person, I've had to navigate symptom and nonaccomplishment done (sometimes seemingly competing) traditions. I wanted to constitute a communicative that reflected that tension, told from the position of a young girl, whose notions of who she is and however she grieves are inactive being formed.

"After being shortlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize last year, I felt emboldened to taxable a abbreviated story. Despite having published a novel, I inactive see myself a nonfiction writer, truthful I needed the other encouragement to taxable this piece."

• Read Lessons from a peach

My Father's Soil by Zeina Sleiman

Zeina Sleiman is simply a Palestinian Canadian writer. She was calved successful Abu Dhabi and grew up betwixt Montreal, Ottawa and Lebanon. She has a PhD successful authorities and works successful the post-secondary sector. She is simply a erstwhile mentee successful Canada's Writers' Union BIPOC link programme and is simply a recipient of grants and awards from the Silk Road institute, Canada Council for the Arts and the Edmonton Arts Foundation. Her debut novel, Where the Jasmine Blooms is retired April 22, 2025.  

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Why she wrote My Father's Soil: "The communicative was inspired by conversations I've had with assorted household members implicit the past 2 years, but mostly my dad. I've noticed that, arsenic a subordinate of the younger procreation of the Palestinian diaspora, we header and recognize the concern backmost location otherwise and this communicative was written to item that a spot and to marque consciousness of it all.

"It was a adjacent person of excavation who encouraged maine to constitute a communicative based connected the conversations I had shared with her. And erstwhile I yet did, I sent it to her and different adjacent idiosyncratic to maine and they some shed tears astatine the end. That's erstwhile I felt similar determination was thing successful this communicative and decided to taxable it to the CBC Short Story Prize."

• Read My Father's Soil