Over the last year, Creative Writing faculty published fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid works that see the world through collaborative acts of art-making—with family, ancestors and communities, and with illustrators, teachers and screenwriters.
Whether imagining sustainable cities, overlapping relationships between writing and visual art, or composing alongside thirty other poets, these books point to our connectedness, and enlarge our sense of belonging.
We invite you to join us in reading.
A Minor Chorus
Billy-Ray Belcourt,
Assistant Professor
What is your book about?
A Minor Chorus is a novel that tracks a queer Indigenous doctoral student’s attempt to write a novel instead of a dissertation. The protagonist interviews a set of people in northern Alberta, the region he is from, in order to understand how history shapes us and our collective future. The novel is a critical examination of how institutions stymie Indigenous life and creativity.
Why did you write this book?
I wrote this book when I myself was a doctoral student, feeling an urge to investigate my strong desire to write a novel. I wanted to interrogate that desire, figure out where it came from. I also had been meaning to say more about northern Alberta, a place so seldom discussed in literature, especially from an Indigenous point of view.
Better Connected
Tanya Kyi, Lecturer
with daughter Julia Kyi
(Illustrated by Vivian Rosas)
What is your book about?
From environmental activism and gun control to immigration policy and education, girls are leading the way. They’re showing up, teaming up, and speaking up. You’ve probably seen media stories about the ways girls interact online, with headlines like “Depression in Girls Linked to Higher Use of Social Media,” or “Half of Girls Are Bullied on the Internet.” But there’s another side to the story. Better Connected focuses on less recognized and more positive online experiences. With profiles of real changemakers and practical tools for getting started, this book is an inspiring look at the amazing things girls can accomplish.
Why did you write this book?
At the breakfast table one day, I floated a new book idea. I wanted to write about the girls who were launching their own platforms or using social media for leadership and advocacy. My daughter reeled off so many great ideas, I asked if she’d like to co-write the book. Julia did most of her writing at midnight, and I tend to write in the early mornings, so we had to actually schedule meetings to edit things together. But we got along surprisingly well and we’re both proud of the results.
Exculpatory Lilies
Susan Musgrave,
Lecturer
Susan Musgrave,If grief is the willingness to be claimed by a story bigger than ourselves, Susan Musgrave writes, “in that / tender wavering, I let grief in,” responding to the death of her partner, Stephen Reid, in 2018. Following this traumatic loss, in September 2021, their daughter, Sophie, died of an accidental overdose after a twenty-year struggle with addiction.
But to say Exculpatory Lilies is solely about grief would be to miss the whole nature of Musgrave’s voice and sensibility. Throughout this collection, Musgrave’s alertness to even the most desolate places makes her personal sorrows astonishingly potent; and her scrutiny of language, and emotions, makes shot silk out of sackcloth and ashes.
I Am William
Leanna Brodie,
Assistant Professor
What is your book about?
Margaret Shakespeare, age 13, must write her remarkable plays in secret: it is 1577, and a girl who can read and write is in danger from the witch-hunters. After all, as her father keeps reminding her, a woman’s place is in the home…next to a big pile of laundry. Once the sweet but dim William discovers his sister’s astonishing talent, a chain of events is set in motion that will change both their lives forever. What happens to women of genius in a world that wants only their silence? Can a sister’s determination—and a brother’s unfailing love—really conquer all?
Why did you write this book?
I Am William represents my fourth time translating the eloquent, passionate, often hilarious work of Rébecca Déraspe, a theatrical dynamo who regularly lights up the theatres of Montréal, Vancouver, and Paris with her unique vision of the world. It’s been my pleasure and my honour to bring a little of her work into the English language, and this piece—which talks about who is allowed to tell their story—felt urgent, fresh, and yet also fundamentally timeless.
In the Serpent’s Wake
Rachel Hartman,
Adjunct Professor
What is your book about?
In the Serpent’s Wake, the long-awaited sequel to my 2018 YA fantasy Tess of the Road, follows Tess and her companions on a sea voyage in search of the last World Serpent at the bottom of the world.
Why did you write this book?
Tess’s first book was about walking back to yourself after trauma and learning to be the protagonist of your own life again. In her second book, I wanted to explore what it looks like to face the world after that, and how those epiphanies apply.
Midwinter Constellation
Bronwen Tate,
Assistant Professor of Teaching
What is your book about?
A radical experiment in collective writing, the book embroiders, echoes, and blurs the voices of poets across the U.S. and beyond. They wake up in bed together and spend the day writing while nursing babies, grading papers, driving home for the holidays, making meals, and gathering in bookstores and living rooms to read Midwinter Day aloud. While threads of identity can be traced through the repeated names of children, highways, books, and pets, Midwinter Constellation declines to identify who’s speaking when, exceeding the territory of authorship and rejecting the illusion that we are separate.
Why did you write this book?
On December 22, 2018, the 40th anniversary of Bernadette Mayer’s writing of Midwinter Day, I joined thirty-one other women poets to type into Google Docs titled Dreams, Morning, Noontime, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. Following the six-part structure of Mayer’s book, we composed alongside each other all day, dozens of cursors blinking in a virtual happening. Midwinter Constellation is the result. Part patchwork quilt, part collective consciousness, the book hopes “to prove the day like the dream has everything in it,” as Mayer wrote in 1978, and to extend her vision into a global 21st-century everyday.
Our Green City
Tanya Kyi,
Lecturer
(Illustrated by Colleen Larmour)
What is your book about?
This picture book is a charming, child-centred tour of a sustainable city. Here, neighbours take care of all living things: people, plants and animals, too! In this city, people work together to make the world green. Can readers do the same where they live? These pages conjure a delightfully utopian community, and they invite children on an interactive journey to explore it.
Why did you write this book?
When my son was in elementary school, I took him to a climate demonstration in downtown Vancouver. We marched and chanted alongside one of my friends, a city transportation planner. Around us, teens hoisted signs about fossil fools. Dads held toddlers on their shoulders, and moms navigated the crowd with strollers and baby backpacks. A few shop owners cheered from outside their stores, and office workers waved from the windows above.
My friend, meanwhile, was checking out the bus routes and telling me how they’d had to adjust their stops for the day. Then she pointed to new bike lanes. We were downtown in a city that had declared its goal to be the greenest in the world. What if all these people collaborated to build the perfect place?
With that thought, Our Green City was born.
Standing in a River of Time
Jónína Kirton,
Adjunct Professor
Standing in a River of Time merges poetry and lyrical memoir on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on a Métis family. Kirton does not shy away from hard realities, meeting them head on, but always treating them with respect and the love stemming from a lifetime of spiritual healing and decades of sobriety. This collection unravels painful memories and a mixed-blood woman’s journey toward wholeness. The Ancestors whisper to Kirton throughout, asking her to heal, to bring them home, so that within these stories of redemption and loss the dead walk with us, their presence felt as the story unfurls in unexpected ways. Kirton does not offer false hope, nor does she push us toward answers we are not yet ready for. Instead, she gestures to the many healing modalities she has explored as she discovers that the path to reconciliation is not only a long and winding road, but also that it begins with those closest to us.
Why did you write this book?
I wanted to use my story to encourage others trust in their inner guidance, the unseen; their Ancestors and what some call a Higher Power. I wanted to share that we can’t always see what is coming, but we can gently review the past, mine it for insights. I once heard an Indigenous Elder speak about time as a river. He said the past was in front of us and future behind us, moving toward us. There is so much uncertainty in life. Hence the title, Standing in a River of Time. In one way this book is about learning to live with uncertainty, and that healing can be a winding path that begins with yourself radiating outwards to your family and any communities you are a part of. I speak of the things I wish I had known. Things like not everyone around you will welcome your opening up about the things that happened in your life. You may need to take this journey without them, and others will step in, if you let them.
Test Piece
Sheryda Warrener,
Lecturer
What is your book about?
This book considers ways of seeing, thinking through art, the domestic, and the making and unmaking of a self. It traces one woman’s movement from formality and orderliness to a sense of mutability.
Why did you write this book?
I was initially struck by encounters with artworks by abstract minimalist artists such as Anne Truitt, Ruth Asawa, and Eva Hesse, but as the poems evolved, I realized I was becoming excited about catching myself in the act of making. So that became the force behind the work, to pin down my own elusive creative process.
Wildfire & The Shoe
Leanna Brodie,
Assistant Professor
With spark and spunk, David Paquet’s two dark yet absurdly charming comedies (translated by Leanna Brodie) offer a kaleidoscopic perspective of those who are destined to go down a lonely path and those who choose to share the weight of others’ journeys.
In Wildfire, three odd triplets, two misfits, and one misunderstood woman are all burning with solitude and desire. Through an exploration of heredity and fate, these seemingly ordinary characters choose to struggle against their isolation in extraordinary yet relatable ways.
In The Shoe, a weary mother, her perplexing son, their shy dentist, and his cocktail-sipping receptionist find themselves drawn together to face problems too daunting to deal with alone. From meltdowns to moments of tenderness, each of them are called on to find reserves of strength and empathy they never knew they had.
Why did you write this book?
Two-time Governor General’s Award-winning playwright David Paquet has been translated into multiple languages and produced all over Canada and in Europe: from the moment I first saw his work, I knew that I wanted to bring his darkly comic, poetically surreal, and deeply humane visions into the English language. My translations of David’s plays have so far been produced in Vancouver, Toronto, St. Louis, and Ithaca.
After its Factory Theatre production (winner of three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including Best New Play for David and me), Wildfire is about to return home to Montréal in a production by Talisman Theatre.
Writing a TV Movie:
An Insider’s Guide
to Launching a Screenwriting Career
Roslyn Muir,
Adjunct Professor
Writing a TV Movie:What is your book about?
This insider’s guide is a complete resource for anyone who wants to write TV movies for television networks and streamers like Hallmark, Lifetime, and Netflix. The screenwriting how-to book identifies the unique nine-act structure of the popular TV movie thriller and rom-com genres. It gives excellent tips on how to get your scripts to producers and is an exceptional resource for teachers in screenwriting classes and workshops.
Why did you write this book?
I’ve been writing TV movies for years and have helped many writers get started. I realized there were few resources available on this specialized yet highly popular genre, so I wrote a book about it.
