The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Owen Schaefer, MFA. Owen’s graduate thesis is a novel entitled In The Gyre.
After graduating from York University, Owen moved to Tokyo. There, he worked as a teacher, and later a writer and editor for a Japanese publisher. He also became Arts Editor for Tokyo Weekender magazine. Owen spent fifteen years in Japan, then another six in Hong Kong, before arriving in the U.K., where he lives today. He has had several audio-drama serials produced for Japanese listeners, and his play Artemis Seven was staged in London in January of 2023. Owen’s fiction and poetry have been published in a range of journals and anthologies, and his work often skews toward the speculative, exploring themes of alienation and belonging.
In The Gyre begins as bioengineer Mariel Riggs finds herself adrift on an island of genetically altered algae in the Pacific Ocean. The “berg” is a living landmass that Mariel herself helped design as both a tidal-surge barrier and experimental floating farm. Now, as she gets down to the business of surviving, she begins to realise that her own isolation started long before the tsunami. Is the berg the only place that Mariel truly belongs? A survival story of a different kind, this near-future speculative work explores issues of psychological abuse, depression, and grief, set against the backdrop of a spiralling climate crisis.
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