The 21st UBC Creative Writing Summer Residency runs from July 14 to 24, 2026. The Summer Residency is an intensive and generative eight days of face-to-face programming on UBC Vancouver campus to motivate and challenge students’ writing practice, while connecting them 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.
Théodora Armstrong
Théodora Armstrong is a fiction writer, poet, and photographer. Her collection of short fiction, Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for Fiction, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She holds an MFA from the School of Creative Writing at UBC where she also taught fiction for a decade. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and won awards across Canada, and have also been included in both The Journey Prize Anthology 20 and Coming Attractions 10. Welcome to Sunny Town is her debut novel. Currently, she lives in North Vancouver with her husband and two children.
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of six books; most recently, Coexistence: Stories and The Idea of an Entire Life: Poems.
Jillian Christmas
Jillian Christmas is an artist, creative facilitator, curator, consultant, and advocate in the arts community. She is the long-time spoken word curator of the Vancouver Writers Fest, and former artistic director of Verses Festival of Words. Utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across North America and beyond. She is the author of The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020), and the children’s book, The Magic Shell (Flamingo Rampant Press 2022). In Fall of 2023, Christmas was appointed as the inaugural Poet-in-residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she can often be found daydreaming. She is the current Curatorial Director at Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture. Working and living on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people (Vancouver, BC.)
Marian Churchland
Marian Churchland has worked as an illustrator and comic artist for over twenty years, contributing to multiple comic series, as well as other visual media projects such as games and magazines. Their first graphic novel, Beast, won the Russ Manning award, and they are publishing their current project, The Vyrd, chapter by chapter online, in collaboration with their friend and co-writer, Claire Gibson.
Dina Del Bucchia
Dina Del Bucchia (she/her) is the author of the short-story collection Don’t Tell Me What to Do and of five collections of poetry, mostly recently You’re Gonna Love This. Her second short story collection, Tougher Than the Rest, will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in September 2026. You can find out more about her at dinadelbucchia.com.
Nathalie De Los Santos
Nathalie De Los Santos (she/her/they/them) is a writer and creative based in Vancouver, Canada. She is the founder of PilipinxPages, a platform highlighting Filipinx authors, and a fellow of the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. Her work has appeared in Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, Fractured Lit, The Globe and Mail, SAD Magazine, and more. She co-created the inaugural Filipino-Canadian Book Festival and she also hosts the Filipino Fairy Tales, Mythology, and Folklore podcast.
Whitney French
Whitney French (she/her) is a writer, educator and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina, 2019) and Griot: Six WritersSojourn into the Dark (Penguin Random House, 2022). She is the author of Syncopation (Wolsack and Wynn Press, 2025), a novel-in-verse.
Whitney is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her work. Whitney is also a certified arts educator who taught creative writing at Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto and guest lectured at Humber College for the Business of Publishing course. Whitney has also lectured and presented in spaces such as Spelman College, the Aga Khan Museum, and Howard University. Having worked as both a developmental and acquisitions editor, Whitney is now the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada.
Sara Graefe
Sara Graefe (she/they) is a playwright, screenwriter, dramaturge/story editor and essayist. She is a three-time winner of the National Arts Centre (NAC) Young Playwrights Search and her early play Sadly As I Tie My Shoes premiered to critical acclaim at the NAC Atelier in Ottawa. Other plays include Scribbles, Dreamspyre (Honourable Mention, Jane Chambers Playwriting Award) and Yellow on Thursdays. Her current work-in-progress, Courage, developed in collaboration with Vancouver dramaturge Joanna Garfinkel and at Banff Playwrights Lab with Montreal dramaturge Emma Tibaldo, is an anti-war play exploring intergenerational impacts oof migration and flight.
Sara was a screenwriter-in-residence at the Canadian Film Centre and has worked for many years in the BC film industry, including five seasons in the writing room of Edgemont, CBC-TV’s Gemini and Leo award-winning teen series. She also writes creative nonfiction and is the editorof Swelling with Pride: Queer Conception and Adoption Stories (Dagger Editions/Caitlin Press), selected for the American Library Association’s 2020 Over the Rainbow Nonfiction Longlist. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing and Theatre from UBC.
Jennica Harper
Jennica Harper was Showrunner and Co-Creator of the award-winning comedy series JANN, starring Jann Arden, which ran for three seasons and a holiday special. She was also Co-Showrunner for Season 3 of CBC’s Run the Burbs. Most recently, Jennica was a writer/Co-Executive Producer on the new Netflix drama Crew Girl, as well as on Season 2 of Murder in a Small Town and the upcoming Private Eyes: West Coast. She wrote for Skymed, The Spencer Sisters, The Order, Motive, and the acclaimed crime drama Cardinal, among others. In the family space, she was a writer-producer on Gangnam Project and Some Assembly Required. Jennica has been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards and won two WGC Awards for best script. She has also published four books of poetry, the most recent being Bounce House (Anvil Press, 2019.) She lives in Vancouver, BC with her family.
Nalo Hopkinson
Jamaican-Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson, born in 1960, was the recipient of the 1997 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest for Brown Girl in the Ring. She has published six novels, numerous short stories, and has written comics in DC’s “Sandman” universe. She has received the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award, the John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, the World Fantasy Award, Canada’s Aurora Award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award. In 2020, Science Fiction Writers Association made her its 37th Damon Knight Memorial “Grand Master,” a lifetime achievement award in recognition of her writing, teaching, and mentorship. She lives in Vancouver, BC, where she is a professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her 2024 novel, Blackheart Man, was also a Sunburst Award winner.
Zac Hug
Zac Hug is a television and screenwriter, as well as a Lecturer of Film and Television Writing at University of British Columbia. TV: Drop Dead Diva, Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments, Twelve Dates Til Christmas. Hallmark: Road to Christmas, Ghosts of Christmas Always. Directing work includes the award winning short Just Between Us and web series These People. Zac holds a BFA in Acting from NYU, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. He consults through storyhugwriting.com.
Anosh Irani
Anosh Irani is a three-time Governor General’s Literary Award-shortlisted novelist (The Parcel) and playwright (The Bombay Plays, The Men in White) and a two-time winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play (Bombay Black, Buffoon). 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. www.anoshirani.com
Vici Johnstone
Vici Johnstone has worked in theatre, radio, television, film and digital media. She entered the publishing industry in 2006 when she was hired by Harbour Publishing as the production manager, and later the managing editor and general manager. She purchased Caitlin Press in 2008.
Under her leadership, Caitlin Press remains committed to its feminist origins and BC roots, while expanding the catalogue to reflect the diverse cultures and histories of the province. In 2015, Caitlin Press received the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia. The Jim Douglas Publisher Award honours an individual for their contribution to the BC publishing community and their commitment to excellence in publishing.
Caitlin Press publishes bold works by and about BC women, and culturally significant nonfiction books from unique perspectives. In 2016, Vici launched Dagger Editions, an imprint of Caitlin Press for the voices and stories of queer women (those who identify as queer women, including trans women or trans men, or anyone who includes this in their personal history).
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 and Slovene playwright currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. 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). Their plays have been presented nationally at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, the National Arts Centre, Native Earth Performing Arts, the Stratford Festival, and more. They are currently Assistant Professor of Playwriting at the University of British Columbia. Select plays include Women of the Fur Trade, zahgidiwin/love, and Space Girl.
Instagram: @franceskoncan TikTok: @frances_koncan
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 has been teaching comics classes in the UBC School of Creative Writing since 2012. Her most recent book is the Eisner-nominated Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (2024), a collection of short experimental comics. She is also the author of the award-winning historical fiction/horror graphic novel Agnes, Murderess (2019). Her first graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (2010) was recently adapted as a feature-length animation, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year.
Cecily Nicholson
Cecily Nicholson (she/her) is a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, and the inaugural Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading award. She held the 2025 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at UC Berkeley and teaches in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən ̓ q ̓ əmin ̓ əm ̓ speaking Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy ̓ əm) people. Her most recent work, Crowd Source, considers the daily movement of crows.
Loghan Paylor
Loghan Paylor is a queer, trans writer who lives in Chilliwack, BC. They are the author of the #1 national bestseller The Cure for Drowning (Random House Canada, 2024), which won the 2026 CBC Canada Reads competition and was shortlisted for the 2026 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Speculative Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2025 BC and Yukon Book Prize: Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes and longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. It was a 2024 Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year pick. Loghan’s work has appeared in Room, Prairie Fire, CBC Arts and more. Their nonfiction work was longlisted for the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Loghan is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and they hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. They divide their time between teaching, writing, and co-owning a game company.
Jo Ramsay
Jo Ramsay is a Literary Agent at Transatlantic Agency. They’ve worked in publishing for over ten years at a number of publishers and literary magazines which include Simon and Schuster, Arsenal Pulp Press, PRISM International, and Greystone Books. Their writing has been published in The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and This Magazine among others. Jo represents a variety of adult fiction and nonfiction. (Pronouns: They/She)
Ellie Sawatzky
Ellie Sawatzky (@elliesawatzky) grew up in the territory of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty 3 (Kenora, Ontario), and currently lives, works, and plays on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). A 2015 UBC MFA grad, she is the author of two poetry collections: None of This Belongs to Me (Nightwood Editions, 2021) and Hottest Smartest Self (ECW Press, forthcoming 2028), which won the 2026 Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize through the League of Canadian Poets. Recent poems have appeared in The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, EVENT, and elsewhere. She works as an editor and is founder and facilitator of the Strathcona Poetry Studio. You can write with her on Tuesdays at Tuesday Night Write, a drop-in style, generative poetry class on Zoom.
jaye simpson
jaye simpson (she/they) is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer from the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. simpson is a writer, advocate and activist sharing their knowledge and lived experiences in hope of creating utopia.
Their first poetry collection, it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Ed.) was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award and a 2021 Dayne Ogilvie Prize Finalist while also winning the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry in English. a body more tolerable, her second book of published poetry was recently shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Prize.
She is a displaced Indigenous person resisting, ruminating and residing on xʷməθkʷəy ̓ əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations territories, colonially known as Vancouver.
Manuel Axel Strain
Manuel Axel Strain (b. 1990) is a 2Spirit artist from the lands and waters of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Simpcw, and Syilx peoples, based in the sacred homelands of their q ̓ ic ̓ əy ̓ (Katzie) and qʼʷa:n ̓ ƛʼən ̓ (Kwantlen) relatives. Creating artwork in collaboration with and reference to their family, shared experiences become a source of agency for Strain. They perceive their work to confront and undermine the imposed realities of colonialism, proposing a new space beyond its oppressive systems of power. Strain was recently featured at the the Polygon Art Gallery and Richmond Art gallery, longlisted for the 2022 and 2026 Sobey Award, and was a 2022 recipient of the Portfolio Prize.
Bronwen Tate
Bronwen Tate is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Undergraduate Chair in the UBC Vancouver School of Creative Writing, where she teaches poetry, literary translation, and creative writing pedagogy. She is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore and co-author with John Vigna of A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing, newly available with Bloomsbury Academic.
Elio Zarrillo
Elio Zarrillo is a prairie-born queer who spends their days making plays and poems with and for their loved ones. Originally from Treaty 1 territory, they are now based on the unceded lands of the xwməθkwəy ̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, having recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing & Theatre at the University of British Columbia. Recent produced works include LIAM (rEvolver Festival, Exquisite Pressure), The Outside Inn (co-written with Sharon Bajer – Prairie Theatre Exchange, Festival Antigonish), Volare (Prairie Theatre Exchange) and The Show (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre). Some other exciting works-in-progress include PEACHES (first conceived through the National Queer & Trans Playwriting Unit and winner of the Page 1 Theatre’s Outfest 2025 Jury’s Choice Award) and If We Be Friends, a queer and trans play about teens, zines, Shakespeare, and resistance.