Morgan Charles
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Morgan Charles, MFA. Morgan’s thesis is a memoir entitled Grey Matter.
Morgan came to UBC with a background in graphic design and communication studies. Her creative writing thesis draws on her experience and research writing her PhD dissertation, “Shaping Time in the City: A Cultural History of Concrete Modernity in Montreal.” Her writing has appeared in The Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review, EVENT, and Reader’s Digest. Her essay “Plagued” won The Fiddlehead’s Creative Nonfiction contest and was nominated for a National Magazine Award (2021).
Grey Matter recounts the narrator’s experience of an out-of-the-blue MS diagnosis at age 32, a year after her wedding and while completing a PhD dissertation on Montreal’s crumbling concrete. As she searches for ways to reclaim a sense of agency over a body she no longer trusts, the foundations of her life—her relationship, her family’s wellbeing, even her work—begin to show the cracks she’d long ignored. When her husband leaves and her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she must confront what happens when the scripts and storylines once thought solid begin to fracture and fall apart.
Contact
Request more information about Morgan’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Wole Olayinka
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Wole Olayinka, MFA. Wole’s thesis is a novel entitled Fellowship of the Tree.
Wole Olayinka writes about identity, technology, and belonging. His work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, CBC, The Republic, African Arguments, Brittle Paper, and The Guardian (Nigeria), among others. Trained in law in Nigeria, he has a background in business writing and the software industry. Alongside his thesis, he is developing a speculative novel, supported in its first draft by a Calgary Arts Development grant, set in a divided world of tailed and tailless people where society fractures after the disappearance of what once connected them.
Fellowship of the Tree follows Chiasoka, a mother raising her son, Sanmi, alone after her husband disappears in a Nigerian town. Years later, Sanmi begins hearing the voices of trees and is arrested for a murder he cannot explain. Though the story reaches its end in court, the mystery remains unresolved. Sanmi may be mentally ill, spiritually burdened, or something else entirely. The novel asks what it means to survive when neither the state, faith, nor community can explain or protect you.
Contact
Request more information about Wole’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Raine Lee
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Raine Lee, MFA. Raine’s thesis is a musical entitled West Side Women.
Raine is a Chinese-Canadian writer born in Richmond, B.C. She received her BA in English Literature with distinction and a minor in Asian Studies, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her most recent accolades include the Gratias Vobis Ago Award in Creative Writing, the Cecilia Lamont Literary Award in Poetry, the Merit Award from Drama One Theatre Company, and the Paetzold Fellowship for playwriting. She currently serves as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Chinese Canadian Writers’ Association and as the Communications Manager for the White Rock and Surrey Writers’ Club.
West Side Women is a full-length tragicomic musical about troubled affluent women who seek to attain enlightenment only to be led on and led astray by a renowned spiritual guru begrudgingly living as a reincarnated monk. As Eastern religious traditions and New Age spirituality gain prevalence in the West, this story explores the lesser-known and transgressive dynamics between those in exalted positions and their unknowing disciples, both disturbed in body, mind, and spirit.
Contact
Request more information about Raine’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
