Literary Prizes

Marcello Di Cintio, Sharon Butala and Jenna Butler to judge 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize

The winner of the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council, a writing residency at the Banff Centre and have their work published on CBC Books.
Marcello Di Cintio, left, Sharon Butala, centre, and Jenna Butler are judging the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize. (James May, Chipperfield Photography, CW Hill )

UPDATE: CBC Books previously announced that Tomson Highway would be on the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize jury. Highway has had to withdraw as a juror due to medical reasons. Marcello Di Cintio has joined Sharon Butala and Jenna Butler on the jury.

Sharon Butala, Jenna Butler and Marcello Di Cintio will judge the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

The CBC Nonfiction Prize recognizes original, unpublished works of nonfiction up to 2,000 words. Memoir, biography, humour writing, essay, personal essay, travel writing or a feature article are all accepted.

The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.

Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

Sharon Butala is the author of 21 novels and nonfiction books, including The Perfection of the MorningWhere I Live NowZara's Dead, Fever and Wild Rose. Her most recent book, a collection of essays called This Strange Visible Air: Aging and the Writing Life, was published fall 2021. She is a three-time Governor General's Literary Award nominee and received the Marian Engel Award in 1998. She has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Crime Writers of Canada Best Crime Novel award. Butala was born in Nipawin, Sask. She became an officer of the Order of Canada in 2002.

Jenna Butler is a writer, environmentalist and professor currently living in Alberta. She has written six books, most recently a collection of essays titled Revery: A Year of Bees, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Her other books include the poetry collections Seldom Seen Road, Wells and Aphelion; the essay collection A Profession of Hope and the travelogue Magnetic North. She teaches writing at Red Deer College.

Marcello Di Cintio is the author of five books of creative nonfiction, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, winner of the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize. Di Cintio has served as a writer-in-residence at the Calgary Public Library, the University of Calgary and the Palestine Writing Workshop. Di Cintio's newest book is Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers, which CBC Books named one of the best Canadian nonfiction books of 2021 and was on the 2022 Canada Reads longlist

Submissions are read by a panel of established writers and editors from across the country. The jury will select the shortlist and winner. 

Last year's winner was Montreal writer Chanel M. Sutherland for her story Umbrella

The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979.

Past winners include Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields, Michael Winter and Frances Itani.​

The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September.

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