M.F. McDowell, MFA 2012

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

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

My MFA at UBC helped me see I was a writer all along, even when I carried countless other roles within me. It was like being handed a tool to excavate those writing skills, polish them up and employ them creatively, in a style that could be all mine.

What’s your latest published/performed work?

Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces (McClelland & Stewart, Aug 2019)

What are your most recent awards?

-Memoir noted as top 100 Books of 2019 with Globe and Mail and instant National Bestseller

-2nd place in the 2019 Room Magazine Creative Non Fiction contest

-2018 Runner-up Feature Article of the Year with Professional Writers Association of Canada

-House of Anansi Press Golden Anniversary Prize for fiction

-Barbara Novak Award for Personal Essay, 2012 and 2017

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

-Writers’ Union of Canada

-Canadian Non Fiction Collective Society

-Canadian Freelance Guild

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

Have taught at Trent University, Royal Roads University, and Loyalist College.

Kelly’s website: https://kellysthompson.com/

Follow Kelly on Twitter

Follow Kelly on Instagram

What’s your latest published/performed work?

Bar Mitzvah Boy – Playwrights Canada Press

What are your most recent awards?

2017 Writer’s Guild of Canada award for “best documentary” The Hundred-Year-Old Whale”

Mark’s Website: www.leiren-young.com

Follow Mark on Twitter

Follow Mark on Instagram