Brent van Staalduinen, MFA 2015

Brent van Staalduinen, MFA 2015

Brent van Staalduinen is an award-winning novelist and story writer from Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of the novels UNTHINKABLE, NOTHING BUT LIFE, BOY, and SAINTS, UNEXPECTED, as well as the short story collection CUT ROAD.

He has been nominated for a White Pine Award, won the Kerry Schooley Book Award and Bristol Short Story Prize, and has also won and been shortlisted for a number of other awards.

A former army medic and high school English teacher, Brent now teaches writing to university students and spends too much time watching the beautiful game.

He’s also the creator and co-host of Rejected Central, a podcast which seeks to elevate the rejection experience.

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

I credit much of my writing success to the intensity of the program, which allowed me to focus my energy and time, produce a lot of work, and develop a stable writing routine.

The community aspect of the program was also extremely rewarding. I was exposed to a wide range of wonderful writers, both faculty, staff, and students, many of whom I’m fortunate to now call my friends.

What works have you published?

  • UNTHINKABLE: a thriller
  • CUT ROAD: stories
  • NOTHING BUT LIFE: a novel
  • BOY: a novel
  • SAINTS, UNEXPECTED: a novel

What are your most recent awards?

  • The ReLit Award (shortlist) for CUT ROAD
  • The White Pine Award (nominated) for NOTHING BUT LIFE
  • The Kerry Schooley Book Award for BOY
  • The Bristol Short Story Prize for “A Week on the Water”
  • The Fiddlehead Best Short Fiction Prize
  • The Lush Triumphant Literary Award
  • The Writer Magazine’s “Our Darkest Hours” Prize
  • The Hamilton Public Library Freda Waldon Award for Fiction
  • The Alvin A. Lee Award for Creative Non-Fiction
  • The Short Works Prize

Are you connected to any creative writing communities you’d like to mention?

  • The Writers Union of Canada
  • The LitLive Reading Series (committee member)

Andrew Gray, MFA 1996

Andrew Gray is the author of a collection of short fiction, Small Accidents, which was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Award at the BC Book Prizes and an IPPY Independent Publisher’s award in the US. He’s the co-author of the novella The Ghost Line (Tor.com). His speculative fiction has been published in magazines including Malahat Review, On Spec, Apex and Nature. He is currently completing a novel.

www.andrewneilgray.com

Christine Leclerc, MFA 2010

Leclerc is an editor of The Enpipe Line (Creekstone Press, 2012) and portfolio milieu (milieu press, 2004). She is also the author of Oilywood (Nomados Editions, 2013; bpNichol Chapbook Award, 2014) and Counterfeit (CUE, 2008). Leclerc holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

 

christineleclerc.com

Rhett Davis, MFA 2015

Rhett is a writer, academic and consultant from Geelong, Australia. After graduating from the MFA in 2015, he returned home and completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Deakin University in 2020. The novel he wrote for his PhD won the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and will be published by Hachette Australia.

www.rhettdavis.com

Follow Rhett on Instagram

Alison Cobra, MFA 2014

Not a real snake.

You can find Alison on Twitter 

Alison graduated from the BFA program in 2010 and the MFA program in 2014.

Christopher Evans, MFA 2017

Christopher lives in Vancouver, BC, where he completed his BFA in Creative Writing at UBC in 2014, and is a current MFA candidate. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in print and online magazines in Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, the UK, and the USA. His stage play Drifting was produced for the 2014 Brave New Play Rites Festival and his text-based art installation project‚ Places of Refuge‚ is currently installed at UBC’s Point Grey campus. He currently works as the Prose Editor of PRISM international magazine.

 

Adrick Brock, MFA 2015

Adrick Brock is a writer from Toronto, Ontario. His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, EVENT, The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, The Dalhousie Review and was shortlisted for the 2012 CBC Short Story contest. His first published story, ‘Nina In The Body Of A Clown,‘ won the 2014 Western Magazine Award for Fiction. His journalism has appeared in Vancouver Magazine, Modern Farmer, Canoe & Kayak, and Megaphone. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and currently lives in Vancouver, where he enjoys hiking and embarrassing himself on dance floors.

 

www.adrickbrock.com

Watch: an interview with Adrick Brock.

Matt Malyon, MFA 2015

Matt Malyon is the founding Director of Underground Writing, a literature-based creative writing program serving migrant, incarcerated, recovery, and other at-risk communities in Washington through literacy and personal transformation.  He is also a prison, jail, and juvenile detention chaplain, and the author of the poetry chapbook, During the Flood.  His poetry has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and has been featured in various journals— including the University of Iowa’s 100 Words, Rock & Sling, Measure, and The Stanza Project.  He serves as a Mentor in the PEN Prison Writing Program, and recently founded the One Year Writing in the Margins initiative.

www.undergroundwriting.org

www.oneyearwritinginthemargins.org

Publications:

Currently working on first poetry manuscript, fiction, and lyrics for two concept albums.

Gwen Goodkin, MFA 2011

Gwen Goodkin’s stories have been published by The Dublin Review, Witness, The Carolina Quarterly, Fiction, JMWW and others. Her short film Winnie, based on her own short story, won the Silver Prize for Short Script in the Beverly Hills Screenplay Contest. She is the recipient of the John Steinbeck AwardS and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

 

GwenGoodkin.com

Publications:

Short stories & essays in:

The Dublin Review
Witness
The Carolina Quarterly
The Rumpus
Fiction jmww
Atticus Review
Split Lip Magazine
Reed Magazine

Laurel MacMillan, MFA 2015

Laurel MacMillan is a curator, writer, editor and translator based in Toronto. She graduated from the UBC Creative Writing Masters Program in 2015 with a thesis in literary translation.