Lava Alapai, MFA 2025
Lava Alapai
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Lava Alapai, MFA. Lava’s graduate thesis is a full length play entitled TikTok Zoom; Or, That One Time in 2020.
Lava is a multiethnic scriptwriter and director from Okinawa, Japan. She was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she caught the dastardly theatre bug and made short films that she wrote, directed, and edited with two VHS players and her best friend’s camcorder. After graduating with an MFA in acting from the California Institute of the Arts, Lava toured internationally as a puppeteer. She has penned over five plays and three TV pilots while working on completing her MFA in Creative Writing- Theatre at UBC. She is a proud member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society (SDC) and Dramatists Guild.
It’s December 2020: the world’s on fire, everyone’s baking bread, and Ash—a software engineer —is clinging to sanity via code and caffeine. Enter his long-lost dad, Vincent, who waltzes back into his life via TikTok, memory loss in tow, like it’s not been 11 years of radio silence. What follows? Chaos, dance battles, and emotional landmines. TikTok Zoom is a pandemic-era dark comedy about estrangement, identity, and what happens when your past shows up uninvited—and joins your internet challenge. Think Black Mirror, but with more hugs and fewer robots. Maybe.
Contact
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Valentina Sierra, MFA 2025
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.
Contact
Request more information about Valentina’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Kate Armstrong, MFA 2025
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.
Contact
Request more information about Kate’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Carmen Morgan, MFA 2024
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.
Contact
Request more information about Carmen’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.