The Art of Falling Overboard by Loghan Paylor

Loghan Paylor has made the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for The Art of Falling Overboard.  

The winner of the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books. 

The shortlist will be announced on Sept.18 and the winner will be revealed on Sept. 25. 

If you’re interested in other writing competitions, check out the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2026 CBC Short Story Prize is currently accepting submissions. The 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January and the 2026 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.   

About Loghan Paylor

Loghan Paylor is a queer, trans author who lives in Chilliwack, B.C. Their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in Room and Prairie Fire, among others. A graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University, Paylor has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, and a day job as a professional geek.

Their first novel, The Cure for Drowning (Randomhouse Canada 2024), was long-listed for the 2024 Giller Prize, named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024 and a finalist for the 2025 Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes.

Entry in five-ish words

“A fish out of water.” 

The source of inspiration

“I was eighteen and lost, so I took the first job offer that would fly me away from my hometown. I metaphorically crash-landed in a remote Indigenous community in Northern Ontario, with a single backpack, a beat-up copy of The Hobbit, and not enough wilderness training. A local family took me under their wing and patiently kept me alive, with no small amount of (well-deserved) laughter and pranks at my expense. 

“It took nearly a decade before I felt ready to write about how humbled and grateful I was to be a guest among people who have lived on this land for thousands of years. I wrote this piece with the hope of giving non-Indigenous readers a glimpse of the real people and families who live in remote Indigenous communities, behind the media headlines and dehumanizing statistics. To this day, I am amazed at how generously, and with such good humour, my hosts cared for the impulsive young stranger who crashed into their lives.” 

What the readers had to say

“This story explores the challenge of reconciliation by immersing readers in the lives of people and scenes within an isolated First Nations community, tackling the complexity through humour and serious conversation.”

First lines 

Even in mid-August, the lake is freezing. The boat rocks slightly as we make our way, hand over hand, along two hundred meters of fishing net. All around us, the rain is falling in thick, endless sheets, drumming on the open metal boat. Sarah is beside me, while Jessie holds command at the stern. We bring up handful after handful of empty net as the rain creeps down the inside of my collar.

I hoist up the next section of net and discover a green, speckled fish, as long as my forearm. I grab my prey and begin to untangle him, heedless of the teeth lining his mouth. I cut myself on the sharp nylon, but my hands are too numb to feel it. Just as I tug the last string away, he leaps and I lunge after him, plunging my arms up to my shoulders into the water. Overbalanced and starting to slide headfirst into the lake, I imagine the funeral notice: Drowned in unnamed lake in Nibinamik Nation in pursuit of fish. 

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 1,300 submissions. A team of 10 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the list. 

The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers’ longlisted selections. This year’s jury is composed of Zoe Whittall, Danny Ramadan and Helen Knott. 

The complete longlist is: 

• I married a spy. The secrecy broke my heart. by Diana Bayko (Calgary) 
• The Sensibilities of Dogs by Antoinette Bekker (Medicine Hat, Alta.) 
• The Space Between Views by Laurel Borisenko (Chemainus, B.C.) 
• Day Shift, Night Shift by Jo-Anne Dusel (Moose Jaw, Sask.) 
• The Pauper by Izzy Ferguson (Dundas, Ont.) 
• Summer Ash by Rachel Foster (Vancouver) 
• Reflections of a Teen Vessel by Cori Francis (Barnwell, Alta.) 
• The Boy Who Loved Alice by Charles Hayter (Toronto) 
• A Mother’s Guide to Urban Gardening by Michelle Hébert (Halifax) 
• I Wash the Purple Water Bottle by Kelley La (Calgary) 
• I got used to You by Yasmin Ladha (Muscat, Oman) 
• Death on the Seventh by Jim Libiran (Scarborough, Ont.) 
• Fishing with My Father: Reflections on Newfoundland’s Cod Culture by Boyd Lundrigan (Spaniard’s Bay, N.L.) 
• Songs for Linda by Carrie Mac (Vancouver) 
• The Invisible Woman by Laura MacGregor (Waterloo, Ont.) 
• We are baptized for the dead in Taber before going to A&W for burgers and root beer by Cheryl Markosky (London, U.K.) 
• Small Miracles by Anastasia McEwen (Fergus, Ont.) 
• The First Apartment by Jennifer McGuire (Owen Sound, Ont.) 
• The Home That Crossed Ocean by Raffi Minas (Calgary) 
• Little America by Nancy Newman (Edmonton) 
• The Townie Time Machine by Ian Orti (Berlin, Germany) 
• Cancer Stage Exit 4: A Memoir by Lena Palacios (Montreal) 
• The Art of Falling Overboard by Loghan Paylor (Chilliwack, B.C.) 
• The Dances We Do With Our Children by Trenton Pomeroy (Rothesay, N.B.) 
• 36 Views of Mount Royal by Lorne Roberts (Montreal)
• Out of Love by Barclay Rose (North Cowichan, B.C.) 
• In Case I Die by Crystal Semaganis (Bear Island, Ont.) 
• The Morel Moral: A Public Service Announcement by Shelley Wood (Kelowna, B.C.)