How to Make a Friend by Zilla Jones

Zilla Jones has made the2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlistfor How to Make a Friend.

• 36 writers make the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist

The winner of the 2022CBC Short 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 at theBanff 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 21 and the winner will be announced onApril 28.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes,the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until May 31.

• Calling all writers! The 2022 CBC Poetry Prize is now open!

About Zilla Jones

Zilla Jones is a mixed-race African-Canadian criminal defence lawyer, anti-racism educator, singer and writer based in Winnipeg. She has won fiction contests organized by the Malahat Review, PRISM International, Freefall and GritLit festival. She was the runner-up in the Puritan's Austin Clarke competition, second place in Prairie Fire's Fiction Contest and an honourable mention in Room's 2020 Fiction Contest. Her writing appears in these publications as well as in the Fiddlehead and in Bayou Magazine. She has finished work on her first novel,The World So Wide, about the traumatic fallout of the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada in the Caribbean. She was longlisted for the 2020 Short Story Prize for Our Father.

Entry in five-ish words

"You will survive junior high."

The story's source of inspiration

"In reflecting on systemic racism in light of the Black Lives Matter protests, I thought back to my school days and the many ways in which racism manifested itself: lack of representation in teaching staff and in the curriculum, student attitudes toward different foods, cultural norms andhairstyles. I thought both of how much progress has been made and of how much more is still required. I came up with the idea of one generation speaking to the next about the need for racial solidarity."

First lines

For starters, don't do what I did. Plan ahead, starting during summer vacation, before you start at Spruce Lane School for Girls. Spend your summer somewhere the other girls go, if possible, such as a cottage in the private area of Victoria Beach. When you're back in Winnipeg, take tennis or swimming lessons at the Prairie Sports Club. Don't do what I did and spend your summer in Trinidad with Grandma and Grandpa Ramkissoon. Though I did love surging upward with the waves at Maracas Bay,or sitting on the hot sand with a plate of shark and bake, or lying on Grandma Ramkissoon's bed in the heat-heavy afternoons rubbing her legs with cocoa butter, none of this was helpful to my social standing.

About the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2022CBC Short Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre forArts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The 2022CBC Poetry Prizeis currently open for submissions until May31, 2022. The2023CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the 2023CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January 2023.