Jacqueline Firkins, MFA 2019

How did your time in the Creative Writing Program influence your work?

I enjoyed the opportunity to study in three different genres and it helped improve my writing in many ways.

What’s your latest published/performed work?

Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, with a foreword by Dr. Marty Becker. Published by Greystone Books, 2020.

What are your most recent awards?

My blog post, The Ultimate Dog Training Tip, won the 2017 Captain Haggerty Award from the Dog Writer’s Association of American for the best dog training book or article.

Is there anything else about your writing career you’d like to share?

Despite launching during the pandemic, WAG is a BC bestseller. I am currently working on my second book, also to be published by Greystone Books, and provisionally titled Purr: the Science of Making Your Cat Happy. My blog, Companion Animal Psychology, is about how to have happy cats and dogs (according to science). I have a blog at Psychology Today called Fellow Creatures, which explores the social world of people and animals. My writing has also appeared in Modern Dog, Modern Cat, Pacific Standard, and The Psychologist. As well as my MFA Creative Writing, I have a PhD in Psychology, and am an affiliate member of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior. I grew up in Leeds, UK, and now live in Maple Ridge, BC, with my husband and two cats.

Zazie’s Website: https://www.companionanimalpsychology.com/

Follow Zazie on Twitter

Follow Zazie on Instagram

What’s your latest published/performed work?

Privilege (a novel)

What are your most recent awards?

Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding New Script — Inside the Seed

Are you connected to any creative writing communities you’d like to mention (UBC alums, film and theatre communities, etc)?

Is there anything else about your writing career you’d like to share?

I’m a Calgary-based writer and lapsed academic with a professional artistic career spanning nearly twenty years (primarily in theatre). I served as resident dramaturge of Playwrights Theatre Centre (Vancouver), resident playwright of the Soulpepper Academy (Toronto), co-founder and Festival Director of the Calgary Fringe Festival, and Artistic Director of Ghost River Theatre (Calgary).

I’ve enjoyed many professional productions of my theatrical work (as playwright and collaborative-creator), including Inside the Seed, recipient of a Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script, and published by Talonbooks. The City & the City – an adaptation of China Miéville’s celebrated cult novel – enjoyed a sold-out premiere run at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. (Re)Birth: EE Cummings in Song toured to New York City’s 42nd Street Theatre after multiple mainstage mountings.

My debut novel, Privilege, was released by Enfield & Wizenty in 2019.

Jason’s Website: http://jasonpatrickrothery.com/

Follow Jason on Instagram

Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize in prose and poetry and Best American Essays. She worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her writing has been published in the anthologies The Driftless Reader (University of Wisconsin Press), Permanent Vacation II: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, and Imagination and Place: Cartography. Her work appears in literary journals nationally and internationally in About Place, Fourth River, Hippocampus, Cold Mountain, Passager, and Reliquiae among others. Catherine’s children’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appeared in Cricket. Her memoir Black Diamonds, Blue Flames: A Childhood Colored by Coal has been longlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize.

How did your time in the Creative Writing Program influence your work?

The UBC Optional Residency MFA gave me the tools I needed to find my way as a published writer and to create opportunities for performing, publishing, and teaching.

What’s your latest published/performed work?

About Place journal’s “Practices of Hope” issue published my long poem “Women Tending” and I will appear in an international Youtube reading and discussion.

What are your most recent awards?

Longlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize.

Are you connected to any creative writing communities you’d like to mention (UBC alums, film and theatre communities, etc)?

Catherine leads writing workshops, and she serves on the Editorial Board of Midwest Review. She is wildly enthusiastic about Little Free Libraries and is featured in the LFL film Because It’s Small. Her writings are recorded for radio and podcasts. Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area.

Catherine’s Website: http://catherineyoungwriter.weebly.com/

How did your time in the Creative Writing Program influence your work?

Elaine’s time in the Creative Writing Program brought exposure to varied lyrical and experimental influences. Too, she was introduced to placing social and political thought into her work. Woo was first introduced to graphica at the University of British Columbia, received significant critique, and still pursues it.

What’s your latest published/performed work(s)?

Elaine Woo’s most recent poetry collection, Put Your Hand in Mine, Signature Editions, 2019, is a funny and surreal word painting. She is also the author of Cycling with the Dragon, Nightwood Editions, 2014, where her close eye looks at culture and family. Her latest performance is for the Dead Poets Reading Series on Youtube, where she reads Danish poet, Inger Christensen’s “Poem on Death.”. Based on the West Coast, the terrain has featured significantly in her work.

Are you connected to any creative writing communities you’d like to mention (UBC alums, film and theatre communities, etc)?

Dead Poets Reading Series, Surrey Muse Reading Series, Burnaby Writers Society series Spoken Ink, Watch Your Head (Kathryn Mockler), S/tick (don’tdiepress.org), VISi”s Art Song Lab, The Elephant Journal (Boulder, Colarado) and Elephant Academy, Room Magazine, Event Magazine, Prism International, Experiment-O, h&, Toronto Metrown University: Asian Heritage in Canada, Thorn Lit Mag,, ARC Poetry, Arteidolia (NYC), and Otoliths (Australia), The Elephants, and The Maynard

What’s your latest published/performed work?

Shelter, a novel (Random House)

What are your most recent awards?

New Face of Fiction, Random House

Nomination for BC Book Prize Ethel Wilson award (Shelter)

Named one of Waterstones 11 (Shelter)

Nominated for Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award (Shelter)

Is there anything else about your writing career you’d like to share?

Shelter has been translated into four languages. Red Fox Road, a novel for readers ages 10-14, will be published by Penguin in September 2020 and in Italy by Keller Editore.

Frances’ website: https://www.francesgreenslade.com/

Follow Frances on Instagram