A local author has made the longlist for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
"There are 30 authors on the longlist, selected by judges from 1,400 submissions from across Canada," explained Coldwater's Evelyn Pollock.
"I am honoured to have been selected for my story, Is Life a Tossed Salad, said Pollock.
The winner of the coveted prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.
The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 19 and the winner will be announced on Sept. 26.
For Pollock, the recognition follows successful careers in teaching, educational politics, and human rights consulting.
She retired to pursue her lifelong passions: writing and painting after moving from Toronto to Horseshoe Valley with her husband.
Pollock was a four-time participant in the Muskoka Novel Marathon, has attended many writing retreats and many of her short stories have been published in anthologies such as: A Canvas of Words, Whispered Words, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Mariposa Exposed and Mariposa Revisited.
She has published a nonfiction book, Thirty-three Years to Conception: A Voice from the Street.
Recently, she collaborated with five authors to publish Pieces of Us, an Anthology that includes eight of her short stories. She is currently working on a nonfiction book, Will You Still Love Me?
Pollock told CBC what inspired her Is Life a Tossed Salad.
"My older brother died at age 44, a victim of the AIDS epidemic," Pollock explained. "My parents were devastated. Almost three decades later we lost our 43-year-old son during the opioids crisis.
"Authoring this story gave me the opportunity to examine emotional parallels and consider how our family handled loss in different generations. It also allowed me to explore questions about genetic destiny versus chance," Pollock explained.
The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Michelle Good, Dan Werb and Christina Sharpe.
The complete longlist is:
- he Memory Tree by Laura Anderson (Victoria)
- The Sensibilities of Dogs by Antoinette Bekker (Medicine Hat, Alta.)
- The Swell That Follows by Bianca Bernstein (Montreal)
- On Not Knowing Cree by Ted Bishop (Edmonton)
- Awl by John Blackmore (Ottawa)
- My Father's Four Funerals by Lizz Bryce (Toronto)
- Quiz by Aaron Chan (Vancouver)
- Ice Safety Chart: Fragments by Aldona Dziedziejko (Rocky Mountain House, Alta.)
- The Archaeologist's Last Visit by Machenka Eriksen (Victoria)
- Teddys to Manhattan by Kelsey Gilchrist (Toronto)
- The Ferris Wheel by Julie M Green (Kingston, Ont.)
- A Quieter War by Batya Guarisma (Vaughan, Ont.)
- Green for Home, Always by Theresa Harold (Vancouver)
- All the King's Men by Paul Hetzler (Val-des-Monts, Que.)
- The Next Breath by Shana Hugh (Vancouver)
- Mitigoog Call Me Home by Tay Aly Jade (Winnipeg)
- Talking for a Living by Zilla Jones (Winnipeg)
- A Love Letter to the Super Tenant by Marianne Mandrukiak (Montreal)
- Senseless by Laura Mensinga (Stone Mills, Ont.)
- Glass Eyes by G. Robert Morrison (Montreal)
- Et Cetera, Etcetera, Etcetera by Maureen Ott (Ottawa)
- The Weight of the Crown by Deanna Patterson (Regina)
- Not in Their Names by Alison Pick (Toronto)
- Is Life a Tossed Salad? by Evelyn N. Pollock (Coldwater, Ont.)
- Ruth by Gordon Portman (Regina)
- Dad's the Word by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
- Tomorrow, The Next Day, and the Day After That by Kelly S. Thompson (Colorado Springs, U.S.)
- The Weight of a Gaze by Salina Jane Vanderhorn (Deep River, Ont.)
- Random Acts of Walking or What An Australian Cockatoo Taught Me by Kelly Watt (Rockton, Ont.)
- Eyeball Tacos by Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez (Edmonton)
