UBC Reports | Vol. 49 | No. 7 | Jul.
3, 2003
UBC is a Hotbed of Creative Writing
From small classes large book deals grow
Most students dream of cool jobs and a stable income.
Creative writing students tend to dream about book deals,
screenplay sales, poetry readings and theatrical opening nights.
In the case of the UBC creative writing program, those dreams
often become reality before students even graduate.
UBC is Canada’s premier destination for creative writing
studies. Established as a department by Earle Birney in 1965
(it merged with the Dept. of Theatre and Film in 1995), creative
writing features workshops and tutorials in all the major
literary and dramatic genres, at both the graduate (MFA) and
undergraduate (BFA and Diploma) levels.
While faculty members continue to publish and produce acclaimed
books, articles, plays and film, both students and graduates
are winning contests and awards, securing employment as freelance
and staff writers, publishing articles, short stories, poems
and novels and producing radio, television and film scripts.
Here is a sample of works from graduates and current students
published in the past year. The excerpt is the opening paragraph
of each book.
Mount Appetite
Bill Gaston
Bill Gaston is the author of The Cameraman, Deep Cove Stories,
Tall Lives, North of Jesus Bean’s, Belle Combe Journal,
Sex is Red and The Good Body. His poetry and stories have
been widely anthologized and have been broadcast on CBC radio.
Two half-hour screenplays -- The New Brunswicker and Saving
Eve’s Father -- are currently in production for CBC TV.
He was awarded the inaugural Timothy Findley Award earlier
this year in recognition of the literary merit of a body of
work rather than a single book. His novel, Sointula, will
be published by Raincoast Books in September 2004. Gaston
teaches writing at the University of Victoria.
About Mount Appetite
A wry and witty collection by one of the country’s best-loved
storytellers, Mount Appetite is vintage Gaston: candid, personal,
unabashed. The mountain of the title is no physical peak but,
rather, a state of grace, a hierarchy of desire, a pinnacle
of both truth and perfection. “Everyone at the top of
Mt. Appetite is as close as they can get to heaven. It’s
work to get there and agony to be denied.” This relentless
state of longing is the subject of many of Gaston’s stories,
each one by turns grotesque and gorgeous, unsettling and familiar.
Nominated for the 2002 Giller Prize.
"Not knowing what was afoot in the next room, Mr. Oates
told her to stand and take off her blouse. He himself removed
the bra straps from her shoulders, carefully so that nothing
more fell. It did sometimes make women nervous, this laying
their skin bare to him, for they knew he was no official doctor.
At the same time they seemed to understand that exposure,
that some kind of intimacy, was part of this. To him the clothing
didn’t matter. It didn’t get in the way of his work
unless it was distracting, like a fluffy sweater, or that
scratchy metallic material, like woven Christmas tinsel -
lamé? He’d had them all under his hands. Just
like he’d had a few women reveal slinky underthings,
black or shameless crimson, and these women had an attitude
to match, as if seducing him would get them more from him,
or win some of the Gift for themselves to take home. Well,
he would say unto those women, Get thee gone."
“Where it Comes From, Where it Goes” from Mount
Apetite by Bill Gaston, published in 2002 by Raincoast Books.
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Broken Record Technique
Lee Henderson
Lee Henderson was born in Saskatoon and raised there and
in Edmonton. He now lives in Vancouver. His journalism has
appeared in Saturday Night and The Vancouver Sun while his
stories have appeared in Grain and The Fiddlehead. One of
his stories (“Sheep Dub”) from Broken Record Technique
was included in the 2000 Journey Prize Anthology.
About Broken Record Technique
In these mesmerizing, often visceral stories, Lee Henderson
evokes a world both utterly strange and achingly familiar.
Pubescent boys lost in sumo wrestler costumes battle it out
in a suburban yard as their parents stake the odds. A boy
disappears from his home, taken by a man who looks exactly
like his father. A young man spends a potentially heroic day
with his wife at the new wave pool, while trying to save his
marriage. These are loopy, eerily engaging stories both afflicted
and inspired by the profound isolation and psychic drift that
are inherent in a world of talk-show television, mega-malls
and suburban sprawl.
"But it didn’t quite happen like that. His name
was Dave, no, it was Eaton. He was in love with June, and
ditto her with him, but after a few months they realized they
weren’t. He met Angie through an acquaintance or through
the personals or through sheer luck, and they went for corndogs
and soon they were a couple. He spent the nights at her tight
little bachelorette where they kissed and hugged, and she
wore a gritty concoction on her face when she slept. Her hair
was short and green like summer grass. Her big dream, which
she’d never told anybody -- and never would -- was to
own an electric guitar. She said, We can save money if we
both use the same toothbrush. Yeah, he said. One day they
went to rent a movie and she stopped at the Cult section and
picked one out, but when they sat down on her hide-a-bed and
watched it she pressed the stop button after the first act
and turned to him and said, This isn’t about cults at
all."
From “Attempts at a Great Relationship” from Broken
Record Technique by Lee Henderson. Copyright © Lee Henderson,
2002. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Group (Canada), a
Division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.
Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first book of short
fiction by a Canadian author published in 2002.
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Cumberland
Michael V. Smith
In 2001, Loop Magazine named Michael V. Smith one of Vancouver’s
Most Dangerous People. His writing straddles mainstream and
underground culture. His short fiction has appeared in Stag
Line, edited by Bonnie Burnard, Carnal Nation, Best Gay Erotica
2001, and Contra/diction. Smith’s poems have won national
competitions in Arc and This Magazine and his tranny prostitution
videos with Nickolaos Stagias have screened across North America.
Smith, who grew up in the border town of Cornwall, Ontario,
is also Miss Cookie LaWhore, a stand up drag queen capable
of anything, and a pornographic zinester, self-publishing
Cruising, a study of the culture of gay public sex.
About Cumberland
Questions of identity, whether fueled by unemployment, aging,
or sexual ambiguity, plague the people of Cumberland in this
stunning first novel. It is a small-town story about longing
and loss in the manner of David Adams Richards; it is an exploration
of loneliness and the fear of loneliness in lives limited
by circumstance.
Shortlisted for the 2003 Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel
Award
"Malouf’s was crowded, even for the afterwork rush.
There weren’t any free tables, which meant people came
in and left, while others packed themselves around the bar,
standing until they were lucky enough to nab a stool. The
spring weather got everyone out of the house. See and be seen,
as Bea understood it, was the driving principle for going
out - aside from drinking. Women checked themselves in the
bathroom, undoing a button on their blouses, or letting their
hair down. A few drinks later, they’d reconsider their
outfits, making even more changes. When they returned to their
tables, they’d claim to be more comfortable and sit next
to the man they were after."
Copyright © 2002 Michael V. Smith. Published by Cormorant
Books Inc.
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Dead Girls
Nancy Lee
Nancy Lee lived her early years in England before immigrating
to Canada. She teaches at the Simon Fraser University Writing
and Publishing Program, and is Associate Coordinator of the
Booming Ground Writers Community. Her work has appeared in
numerous literary journals and anthologies, as well as in
the 2001 Toronto Life Summer Fiction issue. She is the recipient
of many grants, fellowships, and writing awards, including
the Gabriel Award for Radio. Nancy Lee lives in Vancouver.
About Dead Girls
Subtly linked by the background narrative of a serial killer’s
arrest in Vancouver, these stories are edgy, dark, sharply
observed, uniquely imagined. Nancy Lee journeys into the realm
of desperate relationships, into the surprising territory
of power and impulse, a tipping world of emotional wagers
and negotiations. Her characters are people who reflect our
own lives. Infused with eroticism, poignancy, and a deep awareness
of the desires and delusions that compel us to do the things
we do, the eight stories in this stunning collection cut straight
to the bone.
"That boy works as a photographer for the Associated
Press. He is at home in a suite at the Marriott Hotel, in
a city whose name sounds like machine-gun fire. You keep in
touch through e-mail. He sends you photos of human rights
violations: the scarred backs of Chinese women, a severed
hand at the side of the road, a secret mass grave. You send
him photos of local atrocities: your father’s retirement
cake in the shape of breasts, the words “Jesus Sucks”
graffitied in etching gel across the windows of a church."
From “Associated Press” from Dead Girls by Nancy
Lee, published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., The Canadian
Publishers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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Losing Forever
Gayle Friesen
Gayle Friesen’s novels Janey’s Girl and Men of
Stone have garnered critical praise. Both books have been
Best Books for Young Adults selections by YALSA, a division
of the American Library Association, as well as choices on
the NY Public Library Books for Teen Age List. Losing Forever
is Gayle’s third book. She lives in Delta, BC, with her
husband and their two children.
About Losing Forever
For Jes, normal life is slipping away. Her mother is getting
married again and is totally preoccupied with planning the
perfect wedding. And if one fool in love is not enough, Jes’s
best girlfriend has fallen for a complete jerk. To make matters
worse, Jes also has to deal with Angela, her soon-to-be stepsister,
who has come to stay for a month before the wedding. A half-crazed
mother, a lovesick friend, a perfectly evil stepsister --
could things for Jes get any worse?
- 2004 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award, shortlist
- 2003 Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book
of the Year, shortlist
- 2003 Red Maple Award, winner
- 2003 The Sheila A. Egoff Award, shortlist
"The water at Mara waits for me. As soon as my foot
hits the sun-warmed planks of the dock, I can sense the waiting.
I walk to the end of the wharf -- feel the movement of the
waves beneath me, that slow, gentle rocking. Sometimes I wait
for a long time, because I know in a split second it will
be over -- gone for another entire year. I actually shiver,
even on the hottest days."
© 2002 by Gayle Friesen, published by Kids Can Press.
Reprinted by permission from Kids Can Press.
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Heave
Christy Ann Conlin
Born in Nova Scotia, Christy Ann Conlin has traveled and
lived in France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Korea and
the United States and recently worked as a storytelling apprentice
in Northern Ireland. The first short story she wrote was a
prize winner in the 1996 Blood & Aphorisms fiction contest,
and that story, in a somewhat different form, became the opening
pages of Heave. Conlin was named one of B.C.’s best young
writers by The Vancouver Sun. She lives in Halifax and in
Turner’s Brook, a community on the shore of the Bay of
Fundy.
About Heave
Heave explores the joys and agonies of the Sullivan family,
of what one generation inherits from the next and how the
past is inevitably linked to the present. Twenty-one-year-old
Seraphina “Serrie” Sullivan longs to experience
the world. Serrie snatches up the reader in an exhilarating
and poignant journey from the pastoral countryside of rural
Nova Scotia to urban bars in London, to strip clubs by the
docks, through mental hospital wards and rehab centres back
to quiet and comforting verandahs and porch swings in the
serene seaside village of Lupin Cove. At once feisty and gentle,
Heave reveals human truths with wry humor and compassion while
evoking the importance of memory and forgiveness and the anguish
of growing older. Serrie’s story takes us to the centre
of the lonesome heart that tenderly beats and bounces across
the timeless and mysterious landscape of humanity.
Shortlisted for the 2003 Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel
Award -- Globe and Mail’s Top 100 books of the year list
"DEARIE ALWAYS SAID, “GO TITS TO THE WIND.”
And I am.
Going so fast it seemed as though I was hovering above myself,
watching as I went veil first into those massive oak doors
in the foyer because no one makes a getaway in high heels.
Just look what happened to Marilyn Monroe -- naked, bloated,
DOA. That’s what happens when you wear high heels. I
put my hands out, just like they taught us in high school
gym class, you know, when spotting someone on the trampoline:
hold up hands, don’t push, let the person touch and then
bounce back to middle. But only an idiot would wear high heels
on a trampoline and there was no bouncing back to the middle
as those shoes took me down on that hot June day, my sweaty
hands flat on the cool oak door panels only long enough to
feel the old wood on my palms and I was crashing straight
through the doors that hadn’t been properly latched,
yards of silk dress floating behind me like a flock of angels
as those carved oak slabs were falling silently shut. Magic
it was that pieces so large could move with no noise, wrought-iron
hinges no doubt well-oiled by the latest sexton. I slipped
through the crack and left the musty church behind, all those
pews full of stunned guests, and then the sweet outdoors was
in front of me but I was crashing backwards as the doors slammed
shut, the stupid billowy dress jammed in the doors, and I
was smashed back and up, three feet off the top step, hand
pounding back into the hard wood, pain dull and distant, and
then me, dangling there, garland of flowers down over my eye,
battered bouquet of freesias and roses still in my right hand,
its scent floating up on the hot summer air, enveloping me
in the sweet and squashed miasma of my life."
Excerpted from Heave Copyright © 2002 Christy Ann Conlin
Published by Random House of Canada Ltd. Reproduced by arrangement
with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
Compiled by Erica Smishek with information supplied by book
publishers and UBC creative writing.
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