How To Watch Your Daughter Die by Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez

Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez has made the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for How To Watch Your Daughter Die. 

The winner of the 2025 CBC Short Story 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 their work will be 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 April 10 and the winner will be announced on April 17. 

• 32 writers from across Canada make 2025 CBC Short Story Prize longlist

If you're interested in other CBC Literary Prizes, the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems from April 1-June 1.

The 2026 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. 

About Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez

Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez grew up in Edmonton, traditional territory of the Cree, Anishinaabe, Blackfoot, Métis, Dene and Nakota Sioux. She has a PhD in English from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has published academic articles in critical race theory and medieval studies. Recently, she's transitioned to studying creative writing. She considers magical realism an analgesic to life's more harsh and brutal moments and is having fun writing a novel with her husband about a Mexican migrant and his daughter who are haunted by a troublesome psychic inheritance. 

Wegmann-Sanchez's story Eyeball Tacos was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

Entry in five-ish words

"One illness shatters many lives."

The short story's source of inspiration

"Through years of caring for a critically ill loved one, I attended support groups and heard the stories of many family caregivers. There is a crippling helplessness in watching a mental health or substance abuse disorder — or even a physical disease like dementia or cancer — come close to killing someone you love again and again. This is the first time I've ever written a story with a second-person narrator, but it seemed especially on point here to show that this nightmare experience represents not that of one fictional narrator with a child who is ill, but rather an ordeal that anyone could have to face."

First lines

Tell her to stop eating gluten.
Tell her to hold an ice cube in each hand to learn distress tolerance.
It's because you are too lenient.
It's because you are too strict.
It's because your husband is too emotionally absent.
It's because you are too emotionally enmeshed.
It's because of that time you responded impatiently to her at eight fifteen on a Thursday night seven years ago. 

The orderly leads you through the locked psych ward to the second secured portal. It looks like an airlock in a Hollywood movie spaceship. Your gaze drops as though the real solution and reason for your daughter's metamorphosis might be deciphered in the freckles bespeckling your folded hands.

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 2,300 entries. A team of 12 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 Conor Kerr, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Michael Christie. 

The complete list is: 

• Love is the Enemy by Vincent Anioke (Waterloo, Ont.)
• Stubborn Knots by Ari Asho (Montreal)
• The Troll Artist by Pam Barnsley (Comox, B.C.)
• Zodiac Attack by Andrea Bishop (Salt Spring Island, B.C.)
• Point of Origin by Alison Braid-Fernandez (Summerland, B.C.)
• Sour Milk by Sarah Christina Brown (New Westminster, B.C.)
• Slug Lord by Petra Chambers (Hornby Island, B.C.)
• Cultus Spring by Jan Crerar (Salmon Arm, B.C.)
• 108th & Central by Barbara Darby (Lethbridge, Alta.)
• Savages by Lewis DeSoto (Toronto)
• Mothers Day, 2017 by Gráinne Downey (Vancouver)
• Driving in a Snowstorm by Izza Farhan (Toronto)
• Sudbury Saturday Night by Emily Groot (Sudbury, Ont.)
• Juicy Fruit, 1947 by Henry Heavyshield (Standoff, Alta.)
• Glow by Linda Kingston (Ottawa)
• Westward by Josée Lafrenière (Montreal)
• Ghostworlds by Trent Lewin (Waterloo, Ont.)
• Hope this Story has a Happy Ending by Heather Simeney MacLeod (Kamloops, B.C.)
• You (Streetcar at Night) by Dorian McNamara (Halifax)
• Apple Cake by Aleksandra Merk (Fonthill, Ont.)
• What About Sam by Rachael Riley (Montreal)
• Lessons from a peach by Emi Sasagawa (Vancouver)
• Grocery List for the Common Witch by Claire Scherzinger (Bremerton, Wash.)
• On a Tuesday in November by Aaron Schneider (London, Ont.)
• Real is Love by Michelle Sinclair (Ottawa)
• My Father's Soil by Zeina Sleiman (Edmonton)
• Personnel Unknown by John Sudlow (Oakville, Ont.)
• Dirty Gert by Pamela van der Woude (Picton, Ont.)
• Mount Zoo by Paul Warren (Duncan, B.C.)
• How To Watch Your Daughter Die by Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez (Edmonton)
• Self Care by Erin Wilk (Kitchener, Ont.)
• Gold by Julia Williams (Calgary)