Proverbs of the Lesser by Will Richter

Will Richter has made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Proverbs of the Lesser.

• Calling all poets! The 2021 CBC Poetry Prize is now open for submissions

The winner of the 2021CBCShort Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency attheBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. 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 22 and the winner will be announced on April 29.

• 33 writers make the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist

About Will Richter

Will Richter's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in subTerrain, Arts & Letters, Fiction Internationaland The Threepenny Review. A previous story, At a Distance,made the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist. His storyThe Man Who Hiredwas runner-up in subTerrain's Lush Triumphant Literary Awards competition. Raised on the remote B.C. coast and Vancouver Island, Will now lives in Vancouver with his wife and son.

Entry in five-ish words

"Plagues. Language. Anonymity. Connection. Disconnection."

The story's source of inspiration

"I was sitting in my apartment, as people do these days, and took down a book of quotations from a shelf, just kind of leafing through it. Coming to the section on proverbs, I saw that most of those were unattributed, and I started to think about the now anonymous people who first spoke them, how it's very likely that those words are all that's left of them. That got me thinking more generally about what, if anything, might ultimately stick around from this time we're living in once it's gone. So I started writing about that, and then a lot of other things came into it and the original point changed quite a bit, but that was the germ of the story."

First lines

I'm working late on the Greatest Book of Quotations when a paramedic calls to tell me that Father has hurt himself again. She refers to him as Flynn, one of his made-up names, and for a moment I think of telling her no, that's not my father. That man you have there, I've never heard of him before.

She refers to him as Flynn, one of his made-up names, and for a moment I think of telling her no, that's not my father. That man you have there, I've never heard of him before.

In Quotations I'm just starting a new section, Proverbs. There it is on the laptop in front of me, the work in progress. So far I'm not impressed. A stitch in time saves nine, but good things come to those who wait. Better safe than sorry, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Whatever your prejudice, there's a proverb for you. The wisdom of the mob. First this way, then that.

"Hello?" says the voice. "Are you still there?"

I close my computer, push it away. "Yeah," I say. "Yeah."

About the 2021CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2021CBCShort StoryPrizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The 2021 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until May 31, 2021. The 2022CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the2022CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open inJanuary2022.