Jason Jobin has made the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Stages.

Jason Jobin grew up on an acreage in the Yukon wilderness. He did a BA and MFA in writing at the University of Victoria, where he studied fiction, nonfiction, poetry and developed his own course on how to rap. His fiction has won the Malahat Review's Jack Hodgins Founders' Award, earned a silver at the National Magazine Awards and been longlisted for the Fiddlehead Prize. For him, writing is a place to show the fallout of people in suddenly new situations. He lives and writes in Victoria, B.C., hard at work on a collection and a novel.

A fragmented cancer memoir.

"It was a difficult, very suffering-filled, but in the end crucial period of my life."

"The 15th-floor window's glass is so thick that I try and calculate how thick it is. I press my cheek against the cold pane trying to see its depth. Thinking things like: Could I throw my IV pole through this window like a spear? The view is magnificent. Vancouver spread below the glass like a dark, light-spattered tarp. The West End's hills and mountains. The ocean's black among other blacks. Lights prick out from container ships beyond the shore. The ships always look to have some kind of 18th century lantern dangling from a truss over an old doorway on their main deck. Nurses keep telling me I have the best view in the city. The most lovely view. Nurses and doctors are unconcerned. I wonder what they've seen. They are jaded, I think. Cancer's weighty persistence — like a kid who keeps trying to trick or treat the same house — has turned them hard."

The winner of the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, will have their story published on CBC Books and will have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books.