All This, and Heaven Too by Amanda Leduc

Amanda Leduc has made the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for All This, and Heaven Too.

• Calling all writers! The 2019 CBC Poetry Prize is now open for submissions

About Amanda

Amanda Leduc is a disabled writer and author of The Miracles of Ordinary Menand the forthcoming books Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, And Making Space,and The Centaur's Wife. Her essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the USand the UK. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ont., where she serves as the communications and development coordinator for The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada's first festival for diverse authors and stories.

• Reviving the dead and finding closure: Hamilton writer's short story longlisted for prize

Entry in five-ish words

Bullies, miraclesand the afterlife.

The story's source of inspiration

"I've always been fascinated by the idea of forgiveness, as well as magic and power. I wanted to explore what forgiveness could mean in a situation where someone might be reluctant to give it and specifically, where that forgiveness might literally mean the difference between life and death."

First lines

It's like this, okay: there's a white hall, and a long wooden floor, and a white mist and white walls, and everything smells like plastic I don't know why but it does, that sort of faint, industrial smell you get from a factoryor sometimes a cheap fog machine and at the end of the hall there's another light, one so bright it hurts, and that's where you're supposed to go.

It's not a warm light, or a golden light. It's just... there. You step far enough into it and the light dissolves your cheekbones, like some kind of feathery acid. I've seen it happen. You exist, and then you don't. That's what the light does.

About the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their workpublished on CBC Books.