Linda Glover has made the 2017 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for "Broaching The Darkness".

Linda Glover is former reporter, columnist and dabbler of fiction who lost her muse many moons ago. After years spent staring wistfully at blank notebooks and willing words to magically appear, the stars aligned, her muse returned and she is now mad with newfound passion for creative nonfiction and other such ramblings. While she proudly calls Prince George, B.C., home, Linda shares her husband's spirit and is awed by her remarkable daughters and their families, including the joyful gift of the toddling twosome, Wee Man C and Prince P.

​Treasured trinket gifts eternal strength.

"The inspiration to write this story came by way of an assignment for an English class I was required to take for a program far removed from writing. The assignment: Write a 750-word essay about 'something you own that might seem worthless to other people, but has sentimental value for you.' In the moment when the instructor read out this assignment, something miraculous happened: My muse, which had left me when my mom passed, returned, and I knew exactly what we would write."

"There's a mangled mess of jeweler's wire that usually sits on my desk. It was once carefully crafted into a broach of two intertwined daisies — one standing straight and tall, the other wilted to its side. Although it's worthless to the rest of the world, I would claw bare-handed through live crimson embers and piles of rubble to save it: It is my mother.

"I bought it, and its twin, from a hospital gift shop in Saskatoon. It was Mother's Day, a fact that had escaped me until I arrived at the hospital that morning 17 years ago.

"'Your mom,' my father had wailed over the phone days before, vomiting out a stream of disconnected words: Pain. Ambulance. Help. Come… please."

The winner of the 2017 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, will have an opportunity to attend a 10-day writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their story published on CBC Books and in Air Canada enRoute magazine. Four finalists will receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books.