Department of Writing grad Eliza Robertson has been announced as one of five finalists in CBC’s 2013 Short Story Prize.
Eliza Robertson (photo: Will Johnson)
Robertson’s story “L’Étranger” was selected from over 2,400 short stories that were submitted from across the country. Her name appeared on the longlist in the company of fellow Writing grads Yasuko Thanh, Judy LeBlanc and former Writing instructor Holly Nathan, but only Robertson made the final cut. She is also the only BC entry, with two each of the other four shorlisted English-language authors coming from Alberta and Ontario. (French entries get their own contest, which you can check out here.)
The winner will be announced on Monday, March 26, but you’ll able to read the shortlisted stories on the Canada Writes site, where one new story will be published each weekday morning alongside a short Q&A with the finalists—and you can read Eliza’s Q&A here. Once all five stories have been published, you will be able to vote for your favourite (voting begins March 15).
The winner, as selected by the CBC Short Story Prize jury, will be announced on Monday, March 26. Jury members this year include fellow UVic Writing grad and Giller Prize-winner Esi Edugyan, plus Lawrence Hill and Vincent Lam. The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $6,000 (courtesy the Canada Council for the Arts), plus a two-week writing residency at The Banff Centre and will be published in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine. The other finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
This is hardly the first time Robertson has made the news. After picking up The Malahat Review’s 2009 Far Horizons Award, she was shortlisted for 2010’s Journey Prize and won the 2010 PRISM International fiction contest; Robertson was also one of the student creators of the 2011 Leo Award-winning web series, Freshman’s Wharf, and received the Booker Scholarship to attend England’s University of East Anglia.
According to their website, the “CBC Literary Prizes are the most important prizes awarded to unpublished literary work in Canada. They bring visibility to authors who are beginning their writing career and help promote the careers of well-known Canadian writers.”