We’re pleased to announce the next group of Visiting Writers to meet with UBC Creative Writing students. Creative Writing regularly brings working writers to visit classes and consult with students in our Minor, BFA and MFA programs.
We’re offering two opportunities to engage with our Visiting Writers this winter: private classroom visits and our public event themed around comics. Please see below for more details.
Classroom visits
Our classroom visits are offered to Minor, BFA and MFA students in a private setting. Students may contact their instructors for dates and details.
Myriam J. A. Chancy
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Guggenheim Fellow and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College. She is the author of What Storm, What Thunder, a novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Harper Collins Canada/Tin House USA 2021). Past novels include: The Loneliness of Angels (Peepal Tree 2010) winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, for Best Fiction 2010; The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press 2005); and Spirit of Haiti (Mango 2003), shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004. Academic publications include her Guggenheim-awarded book, Autochthonomies: Transnationalism, Testimony and Transmission in the African Diaspora (U of Illinois Press 2021); From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions from Haiti, Cuba & The Dominican Republic (WUP 2012), Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (Rutgers 1997; ebook, 2011), and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple 1997) which was awarded the Choice OAB Award in 1998. She served as an editorial advisory board member for PMLA from 2010-12, as a Humanities Advisor for the Fetzer Institute from 2011-13, and as a 2018 advisor for the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Phenderson Djéli Clark
Phenderson Djéli Clark is the author of the novel A Master of Djinn, and the award-winning and Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon nominated author of the novellas Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His short stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including, Griots and Hidden Youth.
- Open session for students
Lawrence Hill
Lawrence Hill is the son of American immigrants — a black father and a white mother — who came to Canada the day after they married in 1953 in Washington, D.C. Growing up in the predominantly white suburb of Don Mills, Ontario in the sixties, Hill was greatly influenced by his parents’ work in the human rights movement. Much of Hill’s writing touches on issues of identity and belonging.
Hill is the author of ten books, including the novels The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, and the non-fiction books Blood: the Stuff of Life, and Dear Sir, I intend to Burn your Book: An Anatomy of a Book Burning. His new children’s novel is Beatrice and Croc Harry. Hill is a winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres.
- Open session for students
Comics Speakers Series
Our Comics Speakers Series is open to all Creative Writing students, faculty, staff and alumni. Join us on Zoom for this special three session series. View event details for dates, times and links.
Hiromi Goto
Hiromi Goto is an emigrant from Japan who gratefully resides in Lekwungen Territory. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, was the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean Region, and co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her second book, The Kappa Child, received the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award (now known as the Otherwise Award). She’s published three novels for children and youth, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories. Her other honours include The Sunburst Award and the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, with artist Ann Xu, was published in March of 2021 with First Second Books. Hiromi is currently at work trying to decolonize her relationship to writing and the land.
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica, and spent the first 16 years of her life in Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and the US before her family moved to Canada. She writes science fiction and fantasy, exploring their potential for centering non-normative voices and experiences. Her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest in 1998. She has published six novels and numerous short stories. From 2018 to 2020, she was the lead writer of “House of Whispers” (co-writer Dan Watters), a series of comics published by DC Comics and set in the universe of Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman.” Nalo’s writing has won numerous awards, and in 2021 the Science Fiction Writers of America honoured her with the Damon Knight Memorial “Grand Master” Award, recognizing her lifetime of achievements in writing, mentorship and teaching. In 37 years she was the youngest person to receive the award, and the first woman of African descent.
Emily Pohl-Weary
Emily Pohl-Weary is the author of three novels, two collections of poetry, a biography, a series of girl pirate comics, and a podcast drama script. Her most recent books are the young adult novel Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl and the poetry collection Ghost Sick. She has worked in many different positions within the publishing industry, having edited novels, curated an anthology about female superheroes, published feminist literary magazine Kiss Machine, and been the acquisitions editor for a line of high school English textbooks. Emily holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Prior to joining UBC Creative Writing, she facilitated long-running creative writing workshops in community settings.
MK Czerwiec
MK Czerwiec, RN, MA is a nurse, cartoonist, educator, and co-founder of the field of Graphic Medicine. She is the creator of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, a co-author of Graphic Medicine Manifesto and editor of Menopause: A Comic Treatment. MK regularly teaches graphic medicine at Northwestern Medical School and University of Chicago. She is an Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern’s Center for Medical Humanities and Bioethics. She has served as a Senior Fellow of the George Washington School of Nursing Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement, and a Will Eisner Fellow in Applied Cartooning at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT. MK is also the comics editor for the journal Literature & Medicine.
Zoe Si
Zoe Si is a cartoonist and illustrator in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. She has a life-long passion for laughing at her own jokes and is always looking for new ways to tell stories with her art. Zoe holds a Juris Doctor degree (2013) from the University of British Columbia and practiced law for a number of years. She now spends her days making children’s books, cartooning and writing funny essays for The New Yorker, and drawing comics of everything in sight. In her spare time, she enjoys climbing mountains and petting dogs.
Direct any questions to Sarah Leavitt, assistant professor, at sarah.leavitt@ubc.ca.
