Vancouver writer Will Richter wins 2023 CBC Short Story Prize

Will Richter has won the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize for his story Just a Howl.

The B.C.-based Richterwill receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point.

His short story was published on CBC Books. You can read Just a Howl here.

Richter is a writer living in Vancouver. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary magazines in Canada and the U.S., including Arts & Letters, The Fiddlehead, Fiction International, subTerrain, The Threepenny Review and Witness. He has also written and collaborated on several comic shorts for Dsseldorf, Germany-based Rogue Wave Comics.

LISTEN| Will Richter's interview onAs It Happens:

As It Happens8:09CBC Short Story Prize Winner says he drew inspiration from attack on Salman Rushdie

Author Will Richter talks to As It Happens host Nil Kksal about his story Just a Howl, which won the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.

Richter iscurrently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. He previously made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Proverbs of the Lesser and was also longlisted in 2019 for his story At a Distance.

For the last few years submitting a story to the CBC competition has become an annual ritual, and I wrote this one specifically for it.- Will Richter

According to Richter,Just a Howl was inspired by the Salman Rushdie stabbing. "Although the scenario in my story is quite different from that one in many ways, the Rushdie attack was very much on my mind. And, of course, pointless violence of all kinds is constantly in the news," he told CBC Books.

"For the last few years submitting a story to the CBC competition has become an annual ritual, and I wrote this one specifically for it," said Richter.

"A propulsive interrogation-room story on its surface, Just a Howl slyly raises sharp and timely questions about the state of literature and literary culture. Here, books are simultaneously inert relics of a staid and insular subculture, bastions of beauty and contemplation in a polarized era that may need neither, and quite literally violent weapons. The writer questions if 'she'd been defending metaphor, empathy, introspection, a clever turn of phrase' as does the reader. [We] found this clever story unexpected, accomplished and darkly funny, and were united in wanting to see what this writer does next," the jury said in a statement.

The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize jurors were Kim Fu, Norma Dunning and Steven Price.

The juryfound this clever story unexpected, accomplished and darkly funny, and were united in wanting to see what this writer does next.-Kim Fu, Norma Dunning and Steven Price

The jury selected the winner and the shortlist from a longlist of 27 writers that was compiled by a team of 12 writers from across Canada.

Richter's winning story was selected from over 2,300 entries.

"I was completely floored to hear that my story was this year's winner. I've been following and submitting to the CBC Short Story Prize contest for years, and to win it is hugely exciting and encouraging. I really want to thank all of the judges who saw something in my story among so many others, Richter told CBC Books.

"Winning this prize is a really incredible moment and a huge validation of the way that I've recently approached my writing. In the past, I used to have a more set way of thinking about my voice and who I was on the page. It was only when I kind of threw all of that self-conceptualization away and started really experimenting and exploring and setting no limits on the kinds of stories that I'd try to tell that I began to get results and see my work in print more often. This story was another one of those experiments and obviously one that paid off in a big and exciting way."

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The other four finalists are Clara Chalmers of West Vancouver for Dear M, Helen Han Wei Luo of Vancouver for Eel Broth for Growing Children, Nicholas Ruddock of Guelph, Ont., for Marriage and Katie Welch of Kamloops, B.C., for Bird Emergent. They will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Annabelle Lehouillier won the Prix de la nouvelle Radio-Canada 2023 for Les notes de novembre.

The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979. The 2022 winner was Montreal writer Chanel M. Sutherland for her story Beneath the Softness of Snow. Other past CBC Literary Prize winners include David Bergen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields and Michael Winter.

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For Canadians interested in other CBC Literary Prizes, the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize is currently open and the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September.

The author that inspired the writer

Richter spoke to CBC Books about how he wrote his winning entry Just a Howl:

"This story wouldn't exist if a month prior to writing it, Salman Rushdie hadn't been stabbed.

"But also recently, I happened to have read his autobiography [about]when the fatwa was first declared against him and that whole period of 10-15 years when he was in hiding. He unfortunately came out of hiding and then this happened.

This story wouldn't exist if a month prior to writing it, Salman Rushdie hadn't been stabbed.- Will Richter

"So that was very much in my mind.It just got me thinking about this kind of weird place that authors inhabit in our culture, where they receive a lot of plaudits and there's a lot of respect, but at the same time, we don't often expecttheir novels to have a huge cultural impact on a wider scale at the same time.

"So that was all percolating when I was writing this."

The impact of writing a story

"The story is about a lot of things, but it's also about my own doubts. There's so many challenges in the world.This [story] talks specifically about mass violence, extremism. But there's so many things: climate change, environmental degradation. You see these things and you want to do something about it.

"But I like to write; that's what I want to do. I think often about what kind of impact writing can have."

Choosing a structure

"For something that's so short, especially 2,500 words, I chose the structure deliberately in order to tell this story in that amount of space. I thought a good way to do that would have been to just tell it non-linearly.You don't really realize it's an interrogation room exactly at the beginning, but then it becomes that.

For something that's so short, especially 2,500 words, I chose the structure deliberately in order to tell this story in that amount of space.- Will Richter

"It allows you to just go back to the important moments.You can tell the story in pieces and flashbacks. You can construct it in a way that is very economical. It allows for that moment of surprise at the end as well. Where the story turns and you realize what really happened at the end. Hopefullyit's a surprise.

"So the structure was very important."

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Will Richter's comments have been edited for length and clarity.