Utopia by Vincent Anioke

Vincent Anioke has made the2023 CBC Short Story Prize longlistfor Utopia.

• 27 writers make the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist

The winner of the 2023CBC Short Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand win a two-week writing residency atArtscape Gibraltar Point. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The shortlist will be announced on April 12 and the winner will be announced on April 18.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the2023 CBC Poetry Prizeis open for submissions until May 31.

• The 2023 CBC Poetry Prize is now open to Canadian poets

About Vincent Anioke

Vincent Anioke is a software engineer at Google. He was born and raised in Nigeria but now lives in Canada. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Split Lip Magazine, Passages Northand The Rumpus. He is the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize Winner and was also shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. A previous version of Utopia was also longlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize.

Entry in five-ish words

"New worlds, young love, pride."

The story's source of inspiration

"I immigrated to Canada from Nigeria in 2018. One evening, I found myself mulling over what it meant to uproot myself from familiar places, the parts of selves I left behind. As immigrants, we are constantly rewriting facets of our identities; some pull us back to the spaces of a past that we may never fully recover; other facets push us toward assimilating into our new world. The father and daughter in my story materialized that evening as blurry images representing these two sides. Their developing story arcs intersected with another deeper theme I've grappled with all my life: what we accept or reject from the ones we say we love."

First lines

On the last Saturday of October, Papa's guests gathered in the living room, misaligned couches sagging under their weight. They wore gold-threaded dashikis, even Papa, and washed their hands in a calabash of cold water.

"Thank you, nwa mu," said Chijioke with a brown-toothed smile. He and Papa had attended the same boarding secondary school in Lagos, strangers then. One ocean and 30 years later, they were comrades, bound by an unspoken necessity, conducting themselves as if their unity was inevitable, their friendship lifelong.

About the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2023CBC Short Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency atArtscape Gibraltar Point. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The2023 CBC Poetry Prizeis currently open until May 31, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The 2024CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the 2024CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January 2024.