Victoria AbboudUWindsor instructor and alumna Victoria Abboud has been longlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Photo by Kiren Javed, Nile Photography.

Campus author up for literary award in nonfiction

The August 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut killed more than 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

UWindsor instructor and alumna Victoria Abboud (BSc 2000, BA 2001) was struck by the heartbreak shared in the Lebanese diaspora around the world, while she and her father made minor repairs to her Windsor home.

“The dichotomy of the two would not leave me — I was compelled to try to express that confusion and sense of hopelessness,” Dr. Abboud recalls.

The resulting story, “Repairs,” has been longlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize, for which the grand prize carries $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, publication on CBC Books, and a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

“Nonfiction writing can be a vulnerable place, and writers in the competition are sharing important parts of themselves,” says Abboud, a sessional instructor in the School of Computer Science. “It’s a heart venture, really. I’m honoured to be part of the long list and will be sitting on pins and needles, so to speak, until the finalists are announced.”

Her work was one of 31 selected from more than 1,700 English-language submissions. The jury will announce a shortlist on Sept. 15 and the winner on Sept. 22. Find more information here.

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