The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Emma Cleary, MFA. Emma’s graduate thesis is a novel entitled All Those Strangers.
Emma came to the program after completing a PhD in literature, time she spent writing essays on art and culture, about literary maps and walking the city. During her MFA, she became prose editor at PRISM international, and wrote a collection of weird fiction and a poetry chapbook, Riffle & Splay. Her work has been published in Best British Short Stories, James Baldwin Review, and Canadian Literature. Emma is currently developing a historical novel set over 100 years in Brontë country, and a suite of speculative epistolary stories. From Liverpool in the UK, Emma has lived in Vancouver for ten years. She is editor-in-chief at Geist Magazine.
All Those Strangers is a queer literary horror novel about sisters, monsters, and art. Two estranged half-sisters are reunited after a reproductive surgery and an ill-omened romance with a horror cinephile. The story unfolds inside a decaying Vancouver apartment building, its halls haunted by a long-time occupant known only as Medusa. Here, the lives of the three women kaleidoscope and knot together in supernatural exchange. Using the lens of horror—Don’t Look Now, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills—to explore loneliness, motherhood, and bodily autonomy, the novel blooms with the desires we suppress, surrender, or that are thwarted by fate.
Contact
Request more information about Emma’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.