Our 20th Annual UBC Creative Writing Summer Residency runs from July 3 to 12, 2024. The summer residency is an intensive and provocative eight days of face-to-face programming on UBC Vancouver campus to motivate and challenge students’ writing practice, while connecting students with faculty, guest authors, industry professionals, and fellow students and alumni.
Anna Archer
Anna Archer is a literary agent at Lucas Talent. She has been working on behalf of writers, directors and picture editors who work in film and television for over 15 years, representing her clients and their projects in the major entertainment industry centers in Canada and in Los Angeles. Her roster is a creative mix of established writers, story editors, picture editors and directors peppered with interesting and talented emerging writers. She is fortunate to work with some of the top creative people in Canada, working across all genres including live action drama, animation and documentary/lifestyle. Prior to moving to Vancouver, Anna worked in the publishing industry in London, England for approximately 10 years, where she was the Head of Audiobook Publishing for Penguin Books.
Carleigh Baker
Carleigh Baker is a writer of Cree-Métis and Icelandic descent who lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta peoples. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings, won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was a finalist for an Indigenous Voices Award, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award. Her new collection, Last Woman, is out now with McClella
Tanya Boteju
Tanya Boteju is a teacher and writer living on unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, BC). Her books, Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens and Bruised, have both received critical acclaim. Look for her next YA novel, Messy Perfect, in 2025. In both teaching and writing, Tanya is committed to positive, diverse representation. Visit her at tanyaboteju.com.
Laura Cameron
Laura Cameron is a literary agent specializing in film and television at the Transatlantic Agency. Laura joined the Transatlantic Agency from Penguin Random House Canada, where she worked in editorial, sales and publicity. Before her career in publishing, Laura did a Master’s in Journalism at Columbia University, interned with the Economist Group, and worked for Canadian Business magazine.
Dina Del Bucchia
Dina Del Bucchia is a writer, podcaster, literary event host, editor and creative writing instructor. She is the author of the short story collection, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, and four collections of poetry: Coping with Emotions and Otters, Blind Items, Rom Com, written with Daniel Zomparelli, and, It’s a Big Deal! She is the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, hosts the podcast, Can’t Lit, with Jen Sookfong Lee and is on the editorial board of the small literary press, fine press. Her chapbook, Douche Process, is available online at ryanfitzpatrick.ca/modelpress/. You can check out her website at dinadelbucchia.com. Her new book is You’re Gonna Love This (out spring 2024 from Talonbooks) is her first book length poem and it’s very scary.
Paul Dhillon
Paul Dhillon’s work has appeared in The Malahat Review and Prairie Fire. His work has been a finalist at the National Magazine Awards. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
Sara Graefe
Sara Graefe writes for the stage and screens large and small. She was a screenwriter-in-residence at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto and has worked for many years as a screenwriter and story editor in the BC film industry. Highlights include a five-season stint in the writing room of Edgemont, CBC-TV’s Gemini and Leo award-winning teen series, and her ongoing role as story editor for the Crazy8s short filmmaking challenge. She is also editor of the CNF collection Swelling with Pride: Queer Conception and Adoption Stories (Dagger Editions/Caitlin Press), selected for the 2020 Over the Rainbow Longlist by the American Library Association.
Zac Hug
Zac Hug’s TV writing credits include Drop Dead Diva (Lifetime), Shadowhunters (Freeform), and a wild amount of Movies of the Week for Hallmark, including Road to Christmas, Ghosts of Christmas Always, and the Christmas in Evergreen series. Zac teaches television writing at UCLA Extension, DePaul University, and the University of British Columbia. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and an old man dog named Pickles.
Anosh Irani
Anosh Irani is a three-time Governor General’s Literary Award-shortlisted author and playwright, and a two-time winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play. His novel, The Parcel, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, National Post, CBC Books and The Walrus. He is the recipient of the 2023 Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award.
Wanda John-Kehewin
Wanda John-Kehewin is a Cree writer whose journey brought her to Vancouver, BC, at the age of nineteen, pregnant and equipped with only a bag of chips, a bottle of pop, thirty dollars, and hope, aboard a Greyhound bus. Her literary endeavours encompass a diverse range of genres, reflecting her profound commitment to addressing the near decimation of Indigenous culture, language, and tradition. Through her writing, she navigates the complexities of history and trauma, steadfastly embracing her truth and sharing it with openness.
Drawing from her extensive personal experiences along the healing path, albeit often marked by mostly stumbling, Wanda endeavours to offer insights into the process of healing, aiming to resonate with diverse audiences. As a mother of five remarkable children, she finds ongoing inspiration to craft narratives that transcend the present, aiming to leave a meaningful legacy for future generations.
Wanda’s academic journey culminated in the completion of her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of British Columbia in 2022, further enriching her literary prowess and perspective.
Shaelyn Johnston
Shaelyn Johnston is an award-winning Ojibwe and Irish-Canadian writer from Vancouver, BC. She is a recipient of the Governor General’s History Award and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her first short film, The Healing Dance, screened at numerous festivals across Canada & the US and won Best Short Film at the 2021 Weengushk International Film Festival. Her second short, Anishinaabemowin, will hit the festival circuit in Fall 2024.
Joseph Kakwinokanasum
Joseph Kakwinokanasum is a member of the James Smith Cree Nation. A graduate of SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, he was shortlisted for the 2020 CBC Short Story prize, and was a 2022 Writers’ Trust Rising Star. His debut novel, My Indian Summer (Tidewater Press, 2022) received the 2023 FNCR Literature Award and was shortlisted for the 2023 ReLit Award. Joseph was the 2024 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence at Vancouver Public Library and is the 2024 Writers’ Trust fiction mentor.
Brian Kaufman
Brian Kaufman has been active in the publishing community for over thirty years. He has ushered into print over 200 books and close to 100 issues of the literary magazine subTerrain. The magazine is published three times a year and offers stimulating poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, commentaries and art. It can be found online and in many magazine stores across Canada and the US.
In 1990, Brian Kaufman founded a publishing company, Anvil Press. Its books range from short story collections, novels, poetry, memoir, Vancouver history and music. In 2009, he was a recipient of the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for his “significant contribution to Vancouver’s arts and cultural community … and for enriching the lives of Vancouver’s citizens.” In 2014, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards, and later the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award. He has served on the board of directors of the Literary Press Group and the Association of Book Publishers of BC.
Frances Koncan
Frances Koncan (she/they) is an Anishinaabe/Slovene playwright, director, dramaturg, and occasional journalist. Originally from Couchiching First Nation, they grew up on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba and attended the University of Manitoba (BA Psychology) and the City University of New York Brooklyn College (MFA Playwriting). They are currently Assistant Professor of Playwriting at the University of British Columbia. Select plays include Women of the Fur Trade, Space Girl, and zahgidiwin/love.
Brian Lam
Brian Lam is president and publisher of Arsenal Pulp Press; he joined the company in 1984, becoming co-owner in 1992. He is a former president of the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, and a current board member of the Association of Canadian Publishers. His work has been recognized with the Community Builder Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, the Ivy Award from the Toronto International Festival of Authors, and the Publishing Professional Award from Lambda Literary.
Sarah Leavitt
Sarah Leavitt is a cartoonist and educator whose particular areas of interest include autobiographical comics, formal experimentation in comics, and comics pedagogy – developing strategies for teaching comics creation as well as exploring how comics creation shapes students’ work in other forms of writing.
Sarah’s first book, Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (2010), was published in Canada and internationally, and translated into French, German and Korean. Tangles was the first comic to be nominated for a Writers’ Trust Award, and has become a widely-studied work in the growing field of comics and medicine. A feature-length animation of Tangles is in production with Giant Ant animation studio, Point Grey Pictures, Lylas Pictures and Monarch Media.
Sarah’s second book, Agnes, Murderess, was published in Canada in September 2019, and won a Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature (fiction) and an Alberta Book Publishers Award (speculative fiction). Agnes was a finalist for both Canadian comics prizes, the Doug Wright Awards and Joe Shuster Awards. Sarah has also published short comics in magazines and anthologies, as well as self-publishing her work in printed zines and online.
Something, Not Nothing, a collection of short, experimental comics about her partner’s death in 2020, will be published by Arsenal Press in fall 2024.
Sarah has been developing and teaching comics classes in the UBC School of Creative Writing since 2012. She is also an instructor in the new Biomedical Visualization and Communication Certificate, a collaboration between the UBC Faculty of Medicine Hackspace for Innovation and Visualization in Education (HIVE) and the Centre for Digital Media.
Annabel Lyon
Alex Marzano-Lesnevitch
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir, which received a Lambda Literary Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the Grand Prix des Lectrices Elle, the Prix des libraires du Quebec, and the Prix France Inter-JDD. It was translated into eleven languages and is in development with HBO. A 2023 United States Artists fellow, Marzano-Lesnevich has also received awards and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Eccles Centre at the British Library, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Maine Arts Commission, the Camargo Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and Dora Maar, among others, and is a two-time Yaddo and three-time MacDowell fellow. Their essays and journalism have been published in The New York Times, Harper’s, Agni, and Elle France, and included in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2020 and 2022. Marzano-Lesnevich writes frequently about transgender and LGBTQ lives, histories, and narratives. Their second book, BOTH AND NEITHER, is forthcoming from Doubleday and publishers internationally.
RJ McDaniel
RJ McDaniel is a writer, at least for now. Their essays on baseball and other topics have been featured in Catapult, PRISM, and VICE Sports, among others. They live in Vancouver. All Things Seen and Unseen is their debut novel.
A.E. Osworth
A.E. Osworth is a transgender novelist. Their debut, We Are Watching Eliza Bright, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and was long-listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and The Tournament of Books. Their next novel, Awakened is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in April 2025. They are a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing where they teach fiction, interactive storytelling, and new media.
Photo © Michael Paylor 2023
Loghan Paylor
Loghan Paylor is a queer, trans author who lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in Room and Prairie Fire, among others. Paylor has a Master’s in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, and a day job as a professional geek. The Cure for Drowning is their first novel.
Emily Pohl-Weary
Emily Pohl-Weary’s teen mystery How to Be Found. will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2023. The Witch’s Circle, her dramatic retelling of a Baba Yaga folktale, can be streamed online. via Odyssey Theatre. Previous books include Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl (YA), Ghost Sick (poetry), and Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (non-fiction). She teaches writing for young adults and speculative fiction at UBC. emilypohlweary.com
Jordy Rosenberg
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, as well as a new forthcoming hybrid work (both from Random House/One World), as well as a scholarly monograph about 18th-century religious enthusiasts. Confessions of the Fox was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, and UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, and long listed for the Dublin Literary Award. Confessions has been recognized by The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, LitHub, The Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and the Feminist Press, among others, as one of the best books of 2018, and is published by Atlantic Books in the UK, Allen & Unwin in Australia/New Zealand, and Paseka in Czechia. Jordy’s work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from the Lannan Foundation, the Banff Centre, The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies.
Jasmine Sealy
Jasmine Sealy is a Barbadian-Canadian writer. She is a graduate of the MFA program at the UBC School of Creative Writing where she won the 2020 UBC/HarperCollinsCanada Best New Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has been included in Best Canadian Stories and the Journey Prize anthology. Her debut novel The Island of Forgetting was published in 2022. It won the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Sasha Singer-Wilson
Sasha Singer-Wilson (she/her) is a Tkaronto based multidisciplinary artist of Ashkenazi Jewish and European descent who works in performance, theatre, writing, music, and facilitation. A graduate of the Acting Conservatory at York, Sasha has an MFA in Theatre and Creative Writing from UBC. She teaches at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and York, and is working on a performance project about matrescence and caregiving in the polycrisis, and adapting a play for the screen. www.sashasingerwilson.com.
Mallory Tater
Mallory Tater is the author of three books— a poetry collection, This Will Be Good (Book*Hug Press, 2018), a novel The Birth Yard, (HarperCollins CA, 2020) and a forthcoming poetry collection Lockers Are For Bearcats Only (Palimpsest Press, 2026). For five years, she was publisher of the independent, Vancouver-based chapbook press Rahila’s Ghost Press, publishing cutting edge, cool, beautiful and emerging poetic voices from the margins of Can Lit.
Fiona Tinwei Lam
Vancouver’s 6th Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam has authored three poetry collections and a children’s book. She edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer, and co-edited two nonfiction anthologies.Shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize and other awards, her work appears in over 45 anthologies including twice with Best Canadian Poetry. She has collaborated on award-winning poetry videos that have screened at festivals internationally.
Sheryda Warrener
Sheryda Warrener is a poet, editor, and award-winning teacher. Her most recent collection, Test Piece (Coach House Books, 2022), was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She is a lecturer in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In her course Pure Seeing: Thinking & Writing Through Art, students explore how art and writing disciplines can influence each other to evolve new forms and modes of making. She is the creator of The Provocation Collection.
Kevin Williams
Kevin Williams is the President, Publisher and majority partner of Talonbooks. He has been in the book business for 44 years: 10 years as a bookseller and 34 years in distribution and publishing. He was a long time executive and partner at Raincoast Books, serving over the course of 20 years as Executive Vice President Business Development, Publisher, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Vice President of International Sales, and VP of Operations.
Brandon Wint
Brandon Wint is an Ontario-born poet, spoken word artist, educator and multi-disciplinary storyteller based in western Canada. For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performance poet, having shared his work all over Canada, and internationally at festivals and showcases in the United States, Australia, Jamaica, Latvia and Lithuania. Brandon is ever-grateful for the power of poetry as a spiritual technology and social force. He is devoted to using poetry as a tool for refining his sense of justice, love, and intimacy. Brandon Wint’s poems and essays have been published in The Ex-Puritan, Event Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Black Writers Matter, among other places. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry. His debut film, My Body Is A Poem/The World Makes With Me screened at DOXA documentary film festival in 2023.