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 2020 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
The finalists are:
The stories were selected from more than 1700 entries received from across Canada. The public can read the shortlisted stories on CBCBooks.ca. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on Oct 1.
The jurors for this year’s CBC Nonfiction Prize are Yasuko Thanh, Bill Gaston and Robyn Doolittle.
Yasuko Thanh is the author of Mistakes to Run With, a memoir about how she went from living on the street to becoming an award-winning writer. She is also the author of the historical novel Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, which won the 2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Bill Gaston is a fiction writer and memoirist. He has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, a National Magazine Award, a ReLit Award and been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and Giller Prize. In 2003, he received the Timothy Findley Award, which recognizes a mid-career author for their entire body of work. His latest book, the memoir Just Let Me Look at You was shortlisted for the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize. He won the CBC Short Story Prize in 1998.
Robyn Doolittle is a Globe and Mail investigative journalist. Her reporting on Mayor Rob Ford for the Toronto Star won the Michener Award for public service journalism. Her bestselling book on the topic, Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Her Unfounded series investigated how police services handle sexual assault cases. In 2017, she was named journalist of the year by the National Newspaper Awards. Her latest book, Had It Coming, looks at how attitudes around sexual harassment and assault are changing in the #MeToo era. Had It Coming is currently on the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize shortlist.
In addition to a cash prize of $6000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Grand Prize winner will receive 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.
For more information on the CBC Literary Prizes, please visit CBCBooks.ca.
