Maanvi Chowdhary, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Maanvi Chowdhary, MFA. Maanvi ‘s graduate thesis is a short documentary entitled Munna and Maanu.
Maanvi, a MFA Film Production and Creative Writing Program graduate, is deeply involved in documentaries. She explores the relationships between people and their communities, focusing on the connection to space. Her debut documentary, About Mumma, premiered at the IAWRT Asian Women’s Film Festival, earning her a nomination for Best Documentary at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne in 2021. Maanvi also works as an assistant director at a well-known production house in India, contributing to various projects including commercials, corporate videos, and digital information shows.
Munna and Maanu is a documentary exploring the bond between Maanvi, a filmmaker, and Munna, a domestic worker in Maanvi’s family home in India. As Munna becomes a father, their relationship evolves, especially during the pandemic when Maanvi cares for Munna’s child, Saba. The film delves into themes of fatherhood, friendship, and cultural dynamics, aiming to authentically portray their connection while exploring the complexities of their roles. The film offers a poignant exploration of the lifelong and multigenerational relationships often formed within the context of domestic work.
Video: Trailer to the film Munna and Maanu
Contact
Request more information about Maanvi’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Rame Ibrahim, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Rame Ibrahim, MFA. Rame’s graduate thesis is a short film entitled Prisoner.
Rame Ibrahim is a Palestinian Canadian film director. His film work explores his rich background. He engages in topics like refuge, politics, freedom of speech, the Palestinian diaspora, etc. He studied for his B.A. in Istanbul, where he produced, wrote, and directed his first narrative short film, Eid, about his grandmother. His latest work, Ahmed, which talks about the expectations refugees have from governing bodies, got selected for the New York Shorts Film Festival and the Toronto Arab Film Festival. He is currently working on his third short film, Prisoner, about intergenerational trauma which has received the CGS-M SSHRC grant.
Prisoner follows the story of a son, Adam (12 years old), who comes to realize, as he enters adolescence, that the imprisonment of his father, Saeed, is the source not only of tales of adventure, but also of stories of horror and torture. It’s a coming-of-age story that touches upon topics of political imprisonment in the Middle East, PTSD, mental health, the refugee experience, the effects of trauma on immigrant children, and finally, desensitization to violence.
Video: Clip from short film (WIP)
Contact
Request more information about Rame’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Dayna Mahannah, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Dayna Mahannah, MFA. Dayna’s graduate thesis is a memoir entitled Escape Velocity.
Dayna Mahannah came to UBC without an undergraduate degree, though she did attend The Writers Studio at SFU. She worked at Adbusters and interviewed musicians for BeatRoute. A few projects she wrote during her MFA: a speculative comic about her dog; a poetry chapbook about sisters, in the form of a time capsule; a profile of a taxidermist; a story of a destructive teen shipped to summer camp to reform an obsession with a heron; an essay about life modelling and body image. Dayna’s work appears in Electric Literature, TRUE Africa, and HELD. She is the interim editor-in-chief of Geist, and lives in Vancouver.
Escape Velocity explores the cost of ambition and the misfortune rooted in the adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.” The author moves abroad to pursue a journalism internship—a last-ditch attempt to shed her aimless youth and fulfill her dream to become a writer. But as her goalposts become loftier and her bank account dwindles, the author makes riskier and riskier decisions in order to return home to Canada a success story. This memoir illustrates the dangers of isolation and fractured support networks as it unearths hope in strong familial connections. To find yourself wherever you go is unfortunate only for as long as you keep running.
Contact
Request more information about Dayna’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Carlos Norcia Morais, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Carlos Norcia Morais, MFA. Carlos’ graduate thesis is a novel entitled Immanence.
Carlos is from São Paulo, Brazil, and he moved to Vancouver in 2021 – his current work exists in a territory between these two places. Before he arrived in Canada, Carlos worked as a screenwriter (and a bunch of other things in the Film & TV industry) in Brazil for over 10 years. During his MFA program, DarkSide Books published the third non-fiction book he translated from English to Brazilian Portuguese. Carlos likes to write character-focused stories that are noisy, experimental and move across different genres. His stories have been published in Revista Mafagafo, Big Echo, Mithila Review and Interzone Magazine.
Immanence follows a cast of characters from an alternative, stylized version of Brazil called Cordiális; the main story happens between the 1970’s and the early 2020’s. The central characters – Rosa and Sérgio – are survivors from the fascist military dictatorship that ruled their Latin American country from 1964 to 1985. Later in their lives, they’re living another authoritarian regime during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immanence moves between the literary and the speculative, from the 1970’s to the distant future, to portrait what it takes for people to try to stop the cyclical return of fascism and authoritarian violence.
Contact
Request more information about Carlos’ thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Victoria McIntyre, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Victoria McIntyre, MFA. Victoria’s graduate thesis is a novel entitled Rumspringa.
While at the University of Toronto, Victoria was the youngest recipient of the Northrop Frye Research Fellowship. At UBC, she was a producer of the Brave New Play Rites Festival and the Reviews Editor of PRISM international. As Playwright-in-Residence, her play, A Line of Dust, was staged at the Heliconian Club. Her pilot script, The Boys at St. B’s, was a Semi-Finalist in the GEMfest International Screenplay Competition. She was longlisted for Room Magazine’s Short Forms contest. Her thesis explores sisterhood, women’s bodies, religious guilt, and coming-of-age under a paranormal lens. She is writing a YA novel about Girl Scouts competing for a secret badge.
Behind a wrought iron gate on the edge of Owen Sound, there’s a large greenhouse full of fireflies and a secret passageway to another world. Katharina lives nearby in a strict Amish community. When her father disappears, Katharina must search for him in this unfamiliar landscape. With luxurious silks that you can wear if they don’t kill you, a mind-reading monster made of wind, and dolls that disassemble your body for parts, this is a dark, wild, beautiful world. Using the supernatural, Rumspringa explores emotional, sexual, and physical repression in religious communities and a coming-of-age journey distinct to young women.
Contact
Request more information about Victoria’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Graham Kosakoski, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Graham Kosakoski, MFA. Graham’s graduate thesis is a feature film screenplay entitled Call Me Frank.
Graham is honoured to graduate from the program. Prior to graduation, Graham spent ten years as a trial lawyer, serving as Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and later arguing criminal and constitutional issues before that court. Graham draws on his legal experience in his writing, including in his thesis. Graham also worked as an actor and writer in the film and TV industry, appearing in sixteen feature films, TV movies, and series episodes. As a writer, Graham has won several screenwriting contests and has had a one-hour drama pilot and feature film project optioned by legendary Canadian producer Kevin Tierney.
Graham’s feature film screenplay, Call Me Frank, is a comedic drama that tells the story of curmudgeonly, suicidal ambulance-chaser Frank Gleeson who, after the death of his beloved, must team up with the young and optimistic wife of his disabled client as he fights the crime-ridden case of his career. Exploring issues such as systemic injustice and the process of grief through a comedic lens, Call Me Frank draws thematic and tonal inspiration from films by the Coen and McDonagh brothers. Ultimately, the story asks, in its own cheeky way, whether it is possible to find meaning in life after loss.
Contact
Request more information about Graham’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Jess Goldman, MFA 2024
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Jess Goldman, MFA. Jess’ graduate thesis is a speculative graphic memoir entitled An Incoherent Body.
Jess Goldman (they/them) is an anti-Zionist Jewish writer, comics artist, and amateur puppeteer based on the traditional, unceded lands of the Sḵwxwú7mesh, Tsleil-waututh, and Xwméthkwyiem peoples. Their writing has been published in Maisonneuve, the CBC, and Room Magazine. A graduate of University of British Columbia’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, their writing explores that sweet spot where Yiddishkayt and queer culture joyfully collide.
In the early days of the pandemic, Jess’s Jewish grandparents die of Covid-19. The grief is overwhelming. And yet, Jess has never felt hornier –– grief has plunged them into a state of wild lust. Soon after, while clearing out their apartment, Jess’s aunt finds their grandmother’s dildo. Jess wonders if their horniness was a sort of possession. This starts Jess on an odyssey –– both in the real world and into Sheol, the Jewish underworld –– to discover more about the dimensions of their grandmother’s desire and by doing so understand more about their own. An Incoherent Body explores queerness, gender and desire across the generations through a Jewish lens and asks, Can lust also be inheritance?
Contact
Request more information about Jess’ thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.