Charles Hayter, a physician, writer, and friend of the NBM Lab, has been longlisted for the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize for his essay “The Boy Who Loved Alice.” This piece was selected from more than 1,300 entries and explores the themes of father-son relationships and the impact of memory and stories on shaping identity.

Inspired by a writing prompt in Beth Kaplan’s Writing in the Garden workshop, Charles draws on his childhood admiration for Alice in Wonderland to inform his storytelling. He revisits the comfort and imagination he found in the book as a child following his family’s move from England to Canada, and explores concepts of belonging, transformation, and the emotional depth of the human experience.