Adrian Matias Bell
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Adrian Matias Bell, MFA. Adrian’s graduate thesis is a literary novel entitled Head.
Adrian is a queer and trans writer and musician who came to UBC from Oakland, California. While in the program, he served as Editor in Chief of PRISM international and enjoyed volunteering every week at the Musqueam Garden. He also worked with Sheryda Warrener on The Provocation Collection, an interdisciplinary pedagogical resource for visual artists and poets. Adrian’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Echolocation, Qwerty, Protean Mag, and elsewhere, as well as from Girl Dad Press. He also makes music as Nightjars.
Head, Adrian’s first book, is a new adult literary fiction novel. In 2017, in the immediate wake of a sexual assault, Marty arrives at Callahan College and must navigate an increasingly complex web of academic overachievement, queer romance, their own evolving identity, and their desire for violent revenge. Darkly funny and unapologetically queer, Head examines the complexities of identity, community, and what it might actually mean to survive.
Contact
Request more information about Adrian’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Margo LaPierre
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Margo LaPierre, MFA. Margo’s graduate thesis is a literary novel entitled Lucid Mechanics.
Margo LaPierre is a neuroqueer freelance editor and writer who aims to reduce stigma associated with bipolar disorder and psychosis. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in October 2025. She won the 2021 Room Poetry Award and the 2020 subTerrain Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the 2024 Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence. An alumnus of Banff Centre and Sage Hill residencies and Toronto Metropolitan’s publishing program, she has served on Arc Poetry magazine’s executive and editorial boards since 2019. You can find her writing in the Ex-Puritan, CV2, Room, filling Station, and elsewhere.
Her debut literary novel is a metaphysical love story set in a Toronto strip club in 2012. James Judas is a suicidal subway track-maintenance worker in love with a stripper—his girlfriend, Lux—a dancer aging out of work. He’s on track to die young, and she fears dying alone. The novel depicts psychotic episodes as dangerous yet accurate glimpses of reality’s structure. Lucid Mechanics will remind readers that those who are stigmatized due to illness, addiction, sex work, or their sexuality deserve love, family, and a happy ending. For readers of Denis Johnson, Alicia Elliott, and Rufi Thorpe.
Contact
Request more information about Margo’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
Siavash Saadlou, MFA 2025
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Siavash Saadlou, MFA. Siavash’s graduate thesis is a collection of stories entitled Think of the Sea.
Born and raised in Iran, Siavash is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and literary translator whose piece, “My Mom Told Me,” was selected as a Notable Essay by Robert Atwan for the 2023 Best American Essays series. His short stories, essays, and works of translation have appeared in Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, and Southeast Review, among many other journals. Siavash is the winner of the 2024 McNally Robinson Booksellers Creative Nonfiction Prize, the 2024 Susan Atefat Creative Nonfiction Prize, the 2023 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the 55th Cole Swensen Prize for Translation. He is currently editing his debut novel.
Siavash’s story collection explores émigré life, sexual identity, patriarchy, and displacement through Iranian and diasporic experiences. In the title story, an unnamed narrator—a middle-aged cab driver—makes extra money by visiting graves on behalf of Iranian expats unable to return home for political reasons. In “The Winning Goal,” a woman fearing the government’s draconian anti-abortion laws faces the insidious complications of terminating her pregnancy on her own. “A Deep Breath” follows Sima, a girl suffering from pica, who conspires with her unworldly boyfriend to murder her despotic dad. The collection includes eight stories in total.
Contact
Request more information about Siavash’s thesis project using our Grad Showcase Contact Form.
