Owen Laukkanen is the author of the bestselling Stevens and Windermere series of FBI thrillers, the fifth of which, The Watcher in the Wall, was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. He also publishes obnoxious YA fiction under the pseudonym “Owen Matthews.” A former commercial fisherman and poker journalist, Laukkanen lives in Vancouver with his girlfriend and his rescue pit bull, Lucy.
What’s your latest published/performed work?
Tara’s first teen novella, Size of a Fist, was published in 2015 and nominated for two 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her debut novel, Saltus, is forthcoming from Nightwood Editions in spring 2021.
What are your most recent awards?
Her writing has been published in several Canadian literary magazines, and won Event Magazine’s 14th Annual Creative Non-fiction Competition, and the City of Regina Writing Award in 2016 and 2019. In 2017, she was a laureate of a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award from The Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017.
Are you connected to any creative writing communities you’d like to mention (UBC alums, film and theatre communities, etc)?
Tara is a member of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Writers’ Circle Inc.
What year did you graduate from the Creative Writing Program?
2001
Is there anything else about your writing career you’d like to share?
Tara also has an MA in Professional Communications from Royal Roads University, and was the recipient of the Gabriel Dumont and Napoleon LaFontaine Graduate Scholarships from the Gabriel Dumont Institute. Her thesis, which explores her Métis heritage and identity, won the Public Ethnography Award from the Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Public Ethnography. An article based on her thesis was published in Briarpatch magazine.
From the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan, Tara spent her childhood years in Fort Qu’Appelle, her teen years in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and much of her adult life in Vancouver, B.C., before returning to her home on the prairie. She currently lives in Regina on Treaty 4 territory and homeland of the Métis.
Website
American Suzanne Kamata lives in the prefecture of Tokushima in Japan. She is the author of the novels Losing Kei, Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible, and Screaming Divas, as well as the short story collection The Beautiful One Has Come. She has also edited three anthologies including Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. She is currently a lecturer at Tokushima University.
Website:http://www.suzannekamata.com
Publications:
http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/inspiration-motivation/at-home-in-japan
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Gillian Wigmore is the author of three books of poems, including Orient, published by Brick Books, Dirt of Ages, published by Nightwood Editions, and soft geography, published by Caitlin Press, which was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay award and won the 2008 Relit award. She has also written a novella, Grayling, published by MotherTongue Publishing in 2014 and has a novel forthcoming in Fall 2017 with Invisible Publishing. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologized. She lives in Prince George, BC, where she is the coordinator of the Nechako Branch of the Prince George Public Library. Her work has been published in magazines in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
Website: GillianWigmore
Publications:
Grayling (2014)
Soft Geography (2008)
Dirt of Ages
Orient
Buy Gillian’s Books here: Orient Books
Jordan Hall is an emerging artist whose work has been dubbed “stellar, insightful”by Plank Magazine, “thoughtful” by CBC Radio, and “vivid, memorable” by NOW. Her first full-length play, Kayak, won Samuel French’s 2010 Canadian Playwrights Competition, and has been produced to critical acclaim across North America. An Associate at Playwrights Theatre Centre from 2010-2013, she is currently Touchstone Theatre’s 2016 Flying Start playwright, and her most recent play, How to Survive an Apocalypse, will premiere with Touchstone in 2016. As a screenwriter, Jordan co-created the CSA-nominated Carmilla: The Series for SmokeBomb Entertainment. She has also been a finalist in both the LA Comedy Fest and Beverly Hills Short Screenplay Competitions, as well as a winner of the Crazy8s Short Film Production Competition. As a dramaturg, Jordan worked on The Hearing of Jeremy Hinzman at the 2012 Summerworks Festival, and spent five years as a mentor for UBC’s Booming Ground program.
Publications:
http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/876/kayak
Twitter @SaveMyScript
Betty Jane Hegerat is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, and a book of creative non-fiction. She graduated from the MFA Creative Writing Low-Residency Program.
Hi, I’m Betty Jane Hegerat. I applied to the UBC Creative Writing program with the particular intention of exploring the possibilities of creative non-fiction. I had a challenging work in progress at the time. The program was a gift. The novel I completed as my thesis, Delivery, was published in 2009, the year after I graduated. The challenging book became The Boy and was published in 2011, and I’ve just launched a YA novel, Odd One Out, that I began in Glen Huser’s summer course, Writing for Children. I am referring to this threesome as my UBC hat trick. I’m a born and raised Alberta writer and have lived in Calgary for the past 45 years. I graduated just a few days short of my 60th birthday and I am a vocal advocate of lifelong learning.
Could you tell us a little about your novel?
Odd One Out was published by Oolichan books in May 2016. Oolichan also published three other of my books — a novel, a collection of short fiction, and my strange hybrid of investigative journalism, memoir and fiction — and I’ve been proud to have my words between the covers of their beautiful design.
This new book has a 15 year old male narrator with a “perfect” twin sister, and 5 year old twin sibs each with their quirky personalities. The life of this very ordinary two parent Canadian middle-class family is turned upside by the arrival of a young woman from a Mennonite village in Mexico. The book is about the upset that can ensue when a new family member arrives on the doorstep.
What was the process of writing your novel?
I wrote Odd One Out almost as therapy, catharsis after I finished The Boy which led me into dark places I kept trying to avoid. I finished the first draft during the month of January 2011 while in residence at Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan. I highly recommend this retreat to any writer seeking solitude. I set that draft aside to “cure” for almost a year and then returned to forge my way through another four drafts before I sent it Oolichan. After their acceptance, I was fortunate to have Gayle Friesen as my editor and with her help got to a final draft that was significantly stronger.
Why did you choose to write about what you did?
I am a social worker by profession, although retired since I decided almost 20 years ago that it was time to admit that the stories I needed to tell were getting old and so was I. In my last position with an adoption agency, I was responsible for adoption reunion, the intermediary between adopted children and birthparents seeking contact. Each one of my books has a thread spun out of the yarn of my years as a social worker. The adoption reunion theme was the starting point for Odd One Out, but I also have a strong predilection to write about pre-teen and teenaged boys — the result of a steady stream of teenagers in our home while out three children were growing up — of trying to fathom what goes on in those boy brains. As well, I have a fascination with Mennonite culture and in particular with the culture of Canadian Mennonites transplanted to Mexico on invitation from the Mexican government a few decades ago.
Where do you get your ideas for fiction from?
The seed of almost everything I’ve written has come from memory of a long ago incident, conversation overheard (I think all writers are hopelessly prone to eavesdropping), a character who flies in out of who-knows-where, lands on my shoulder and natters in my ear until I succumb and write the story he/she insists that I tell. I do not write about the people I’ve met during my social work years. I made a pledge to confidentiality that has become a promise to myself that I will never steal from the people in whose lives I was a necessary intruder. I do however, carry with me a strong of social justice and a flawed system and my characters are sometimes composites of the people I’ve met. Wherever the ideas come from, I know that life is too short to follow them all the their end.
What is one the most important lessons you’ve learned about writing?
First shattered illusion — there is no fortune involved in writing, and particular in writing fiction or poetry. Can you hear the Revenue Canada people laughing all the way from Winnipeg or Ottawa or wherever they keep them locked up? Neither is there a guarantee of fame, apart from the occasional nomination for an award. We do have “famous” authors in Canada and they are worthy of the recognition they receive, but there are far more of us who celebrate the pleasure of seeing our words in print and knowing that our stories have an audience.
For me, the discovery that delighted first was that while writing is a solitary activity, it brings with it ‚Äì if one chooses to be involved — a whole community. Our Alberta community of writers is vast, welcoming, supportive, and there are always people who will help celebrate success, or whine with us when things are not going well. Through retreats, courses ‚Äì those I’ve attended and those I’ve taught — I’ve come to know hundreds of other writers.. And I have made some close and dear friends in becoming part of this world.
How did the Creative Writing program help your writing practice?
The Creative Writing program gave me access to writers/mentors who filled in many gaps in my knowledge of the craft, who pushed me to break through ingrained habits of style and subject. It also gave me a new community of writers at all stages of their careers.
Find Betty online and buy Odd One Out.
Francine Cunningham is the social media executive for the UBC Creative Writing Alumni Association. What does that mean exactly? She is on the Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads accounts and our blog, posting information about our alumni, events and news. She also runs this interview series Featured Alumni and loves being able to get to know the people who make this association what it is. For more information about Francine and her writing find her at www.francinecunningham.ca.
Rob Taylor is the author of two poetry collections, The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011). His poems, short stories and essays have been published in over fifty journals and anthologies, including The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Geist and In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry.
In 2014 Rob was named one of the inaugural writers-in-residence at the Al Purdy A-frame, and in 2015 he received the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for the Literary Arts, as an emerging artist. The manuscript for his first poetry collection won the 2010 Alfred G. Bailey Prize.
Rob has co-founded two literary magazines and edited two others, including a stint as PRISM international poetry editor in 2014-15. He has run a blog, Roll of Nickels, devoted to Canadian (especially BC) poetry since 2006, and since 2011 has served as one of the coordinators of Vancouver’s Dead Poets Reading Series.
Find Rob online at Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.
Cecilia Araneda has been working as a filmmaker, media art curator and arts administrator for close to two decades. As an independent filmmaker, her works have been selected for Visions du Réel, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the Images Festival and Ann Arbor Festival, among others, and have been featured in a retrospective screening at the Canadian Film Centre in Ottawa, Canada. She is a founder of the WNDX Festival of Moving Image and has served as the Executive Director of the Winnipeg Film Group since 2006.
Find Cecilia online on Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads.
Betty Jane Hegerat is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, and a book of creative non-fiction: Running Toward Home (NeWest Press 2006), A Crack in the Wall (Oolichan Books 2008) and most recent of her books, Delivery (Oolichan Books 2009), The Boy (Oolichan Books 2011), and Odd One Out,(Oolichan Books 2016) were all projects she worked on during her two years in the MFA Creative Writing Low-Residency Program. https://bettyjanehegerat.com/2016/01/17/my-ubc-hat-trick-2 /
She was the 2009 Writer in Residence for the Calgary Park Library and has taught and done presentations and readings in numerous venues.. Delivery was shortlisted for the George Bugnet Prize for Fiction in the 2010 Alberta Literary Awards. The Boy was shortlisted for the 2012 City of Calgary Book Prize, the Wilfrid Eggleston Prize for non-fiction in the 2012 Alberta Awards and was a finalist in the High Plains Awards in Billings, Montana in October 2012. Betty Jane is the recipient of the Writers Guild of Alberta 2015 Golden Pen Award for Lifelong Achievement in Writing.
Buy Betty’s books:
Find Betty online at twitter @bettyjhegerat and Facebook “Betty Jane Hegerat”
Chelsea Rooney is an author and teacher living in Vancouver. Her debut novel Pedal was published in 2014 by Caitlin Press and was nominated for the 2015 Amazon First Novel Award and the 2015 ReLit Novel Award. She hosts a monthly episode of The Storytelling Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio.
PEDAL
“Julia Hoop, a twenty-five-year-old counselling psych student, is working on her thesis, exploring an idea which makes her graduate supervisor squirm. She is conducting interview after interview with a group of women she affectionately calls the Molestas’ women whose experience of childhood sexual abuse did not cause physical trauma. Julia is the expert, she claims, because she has the experience; her own father, Dirtbag, disappeared when she was eight leaving behind nothing but a legacy of addiction and violence.
When both her boyfriend and her graduate advisor break up with her on the same day, Julia leaves her city of Vancouver on a bicycle for a cross-Canada trip in search of her father, or so she tells people. Her unexpected travel partner is Smirks, a handsome athlete who also has a complicated history. Their travel days are marked by peaks of ecstatic physical exertion, and their nights by frustrated drinking and drugs. After an unsettling incident in rural Saskatchewan involving a trio of aggressive children, Julia wakes up in the morning to discover Smirks has disappeared. Everything, once again, falls apart.
Sometimes shocking in its candour, yet charmed with enigmatic characters, Pedal explores how we are shaped by accidents of timing, trauma and sex, brain chemistry and the landscape of our country, and challenges beliefs we hold dear about the nature of pedophilia, the essence of innocence and the idea that the past is something one runs from.”
Globe and Mail article about Pedal
Buy Pedal at the Caitlin Press Website