Diana Bayko has made the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for I Married a Spy. The Secrecy Broke My Heart.
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 Diana Bayko
Diana Bayko is a mixed-race writer who has worked as an intelligence officer, a visual merchandiser and as an executive assistant before settling into a writing career. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King’s College in Halifax and is writing a book about secrets and relationships called The Half of It: What We Don’t Know About the People We Love. Diana writes about the liminal spaces of our personal, racial and professional identities, and her work has been published in The Yummy Mummy Club and Mixed Asian Media. She lives in Calgary with her family.
Entry in five-ish words
“Hidden identities, deception, longing — a love story.”
The source of inspiration
“I realized I could connect with others by being vulnerable and telling the truth about my experiences. Although most civilians can’t relate to the work that goes on in the intelligence world, everyone can relate to being in a romantic relationship that has issues. The themes I write about — isolation, disconnection, secrecy, and love — those are universal.”
What the readers had to say
“I’m not sure if someone has written about the household routine of a Canadian spy before, but the mixing of humour, secrecy and the mundane brings the readers to the kitchen table for an unexpected series of family discussions.”
First lines
I met Eric in a French class. That’s the story I’ve always told people, and it’s a version of the truth. We spent eight months in a classroom together in downtown Ottawa practicing verb conjugations and used ourselves as the subject of interest. Seven and a half hours a day, five days a week, for eight months, we learned everything about each other.
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.)