Terence Young has made the 2017 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for "Steve."

Terence Young lives in Victoria, B.C., where he teaches English and creative writing to high school students. Currently, he is on a one-year leave of absence to pursue a few writing projects.

Dinner with a difficult friend.

"It's a challenge to capture the character of a person, especially an often contrary and passionate person like Steve, and I wanted to convey both his rough edges and his charm."

"Steve drank too much and smoked too much and excelled at the art of 'converfuckingingsation' in a town of tea-grannies and aging flower children. The man could splice an expletive between two syllables as neatly as a geneticist grafting viable forms of DNA. But talking wasn't a pastime for him — it was war, a way to vent the outrage he felt living among fools."

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.