Valentina Sierra
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Valentina Sierra, MFA. Valentina’s graduate thesis is a feature film screenplay entitled A Raging Sea.
Valentina, whose love for film and TV was instilled by her parents, pursued her dream of becoming a writer in UBC’s BFA and MFA Creative Writing programs. Over five years, she crafted a robust portfolio, including twelve scripts, and received over twenty accolades, notably a Top 3 Finalist position in the Final Draft Big Break Competition and a Grand Prize at GemFest Screenwriting Competition. Additionally, she delved into novel writing, which led to the completion of five novels. Valentina cherishes each word she writes and is forever thankful to her mentors, peers, and all who take the time to read her work.
A Raging Sea is a 19th-century drama set in England. On a remote island, Anna Atkins grieves her daughter’s death while enduring a suffocating marriage. Her husband, Alexander, consumed by the need for a male heir, grows volatile as she struggles to conceive. To restore Anna’s spirit, her mother sends Levina Martín, whose companionship evolves into a profound bond. Together, they confront Alexander’s schemes and risk everything to reclaim their lives. With heartbreak and vengeance simmering beneath the surface, this love story reveals the grit and strength of women who defy societal constraints, embrace their desires, and refuse to be erased.
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The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Kate Armstrong, MFA. Kate’s graduate thesis is an adventure novel entitled Bluewater.
Kate served thirteen years in the military as a Logistics Officer and later spent two decades in the corporate world of electricity trading before realizing her dream of becoming a writer. She entered the MFA program as the award-winning author of her memoir, The Stone Frigate: The Royal Military College’s First Female Cadet Speaks Out, published in 2019. The book won the 2020 Ontario Historical Society Alison Prentice Award for the Best Book on Women’s History and was a finalist for the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Nonfiction. Her memoir’s success ignited a passion for literary prose and dreams of becoming a novelist.
Bluewater is an adventure drama novel centred on Claire Wilde, who experiences a catastrophic loss with the death of her husband and makes an impulsive decision to embark on an offshore sailing expedition with a rogue named Henry Slater. In the confined space of a sailboat on the open ocean, tensions flare, secrets are unveiled, and unresolved dysfunction surfaces. The microcosm of their inner struggles and relationship dynamics is mirrored in the macrocosm of the weather and the forces of nature throughout their journey. Bluewater explores liberation from harmful decision-making and highlights the restorative power of nature.
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Request more information about Kate’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Carmen Morgan
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Carmen Morgan, MFA. Carmen’s graduate thesis is a hybrid collection of essays and poetry entitled Mapping the Interior.
Carmen has a biology background and was a freelance writer for 12 years before beginning her MFA. In 2017, she produced her play Apricot Stones at the Edmonton Fringe Festival. She was an Alberta Playwrights’ Network Emerging Artist in 2021 and in 2022, her play Dante’s Door received honourable mention from the Playwrights Guild of Alberta, and was produced for stage at the Brave New Playwrights Festival on Granville Island. While in the program, she discovered new-found access to and a love for poetry. She has published in Avenue Magazine and Paper/Cuts and received a Confluence Editor’s Choice Award for her non-fiction work.
Mapping the Interior is a self-reckoning, exploring the multiple selves that exist within one being. Through self-reflection, inquisition and research, the collection asks both big and small questions, drawing out conversations with the Wanderer, Daughter, Wife, Mother, Lover, Mortal and Heiress. It draws on inspiration from Leslie Jamieson’s Empathy Exams and Allison Yarrow’s 90s Bitch, getting honest about the stories we tell ourselves and what we inherit. Narrative, dialogue and scene are used to investigate a subject, while poetic forms are used to convey what goes observed, but unsaid, ultimately turning toward self-acceptance.
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Damini Kane
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Damini Kane, MFA. Damini’s graduate thesis is a speculative fiction novel entitled Silvering.
Damini’s love of speculative stories began at a young age, with transportive novels such as Walter Moers’ The City of Dreaming Books and visual media such as anime and graphic novels. She has come to see the fantasy genre like a petri dish: a way to examine ideas in unique contexts. Her work has been published in the Lakeview Journal, the Purple Breakfast Review, and Muse India, and has appeared on Podcastle, an award-winning fantasy fiction podcast. For her piece Words like Frost, she was awarded the second place prize in the Joy Kogawa Award for Literature by the Surrey Muse Arts Society.
Silvering is a speculative fiction novel exploring religion and the relationship between divinity and humanity. As Dove falls to her death, she captures the attention of Entii, the three-faced god of a strict sect of Messengers; a sect that Dove has belonged to since she was a child. Entii promises to save her life, if Dove tells him about her past—and the pasts of her friends. But Entii’s promise is contingent on Dove’s continued faith in him. And she’s not sure what she believes anymore. Is it possible to be a good Messenger? And must it always come at the cost of being a good person?
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Andrea Scott
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Andrea Scott, MFA. Andrea’s graduate thesis is a collection of poetry entitled The World in My Mouth.
Andrea is a writer living in Victoria, BC, the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples. Poems written during her MFA have appeared in many journals and two public projects: Poetry in Transit and the City of Victoria’s Public Poetry Remix Project. She won the 2022 Geist Erasure Poetry contest and the 2024 Raven Chapbooks Contest. Her first poetry collection, In the Warm Shallows of What Remains, was published in spring 2024. Andrea only had eyes for poetry entering the MFA, but along the way discovered a love of comics, screenwriting and writing for children. She’s currently finishing a YA novel in verse called Birdnesting.
The World in My Mouth is a poetry collection that explores the complexities of mothering — and grieving a mother — on a changing planet. The poems in The World in My Mouth celebrate, grieve, and meditate on the human experience: the joys and limitations of our bodies, our memories, our families, our lovers, our connections to Planet Earth. Poems in free verse and traditional forms are interwoven in this collection, with threads of darkness and dystopia intersecting those of humour and hope.
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Request more information about Andrea’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
