UBC Creative Writing Program:
Teaching Assistantships for 2013/2014 Academic Session
View application details
Download application details
The Creative Writing Program invites applications for two full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor positions, to begin
July 1, 2013.
View application details
UBC Creative Writing is on Second Life.
Join us in our virtual classroom
Get the latest on UBC Creative Writing events at Grapevine
Visit Grapevine
UBC's Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Program
MA in Children's Literature
UBC Creative Writing welcomes new Assistant Professors: Nancy Lee and Timothy Taylor to the Program! Visit our Faculty page
Congratulations to Opt-Res MFA grads Melanie Schnell, Ania Szado, and Tamara Faith Berger for their recent successes! Visit our Alumni Spotlight page
Congratulations to Creative Writing alumna, Judy McFarlane, who was shortlisted for the Canada Writes CBC Non-Fiction Award this year, for her piece, "After, and Before". Visit CBC Writes
MFA Creative Writing alumna Aislinn Hunter, author of Stay, a 2002 fictional novel, is having her novel made into a film. Filming began in Roundstone, Ireland last month and resumed in Montreal where it is expected to wrap up mid-July and proceed to post-production. Stay (a Telefilm / Irish Film Board co-production) is expected to make its premiere late 2013, or early 2014. Visit Aislinn Hunter
View more news items 
Congratulations to MFA Alumnus Trevor Corkum! Corkum's short story "You Were Loved" (originally published in the Malahat Review) has been nominated for the 2012 Journey Prize, and will appear in Journey Prize Stories 24, coming out this October by McCelland and Stewart. The Journey Prize
Congratulations to Kevin Spenst, MFA Alumnus and first place winner in the poetry category for the Lush Triumphant Literary Award.
Lush Triumphant Literary Award
Congratulations to BFA alumnus Lucas J. W. Johnson, whose story was recently published in Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up anthology edited by Steve Berman.
Visit Amazon
Vancouver Queer Film Festival
Elena E. Johnson (MFA 2009) was one of three finalists for the 2011 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. The Bailey Prize is awarded annually for the best yet-to-be-published poetry manuscript. She was also a finalist for this year's CBC Literary Awards.
Wade Kinley, a joint first year MFA student in CrWr and Theatre, has received an internship with the Lark Play Development Center in New York City.
Creative Writing Alumna, Josie Mitchell recently won a cash prize for third place in the Vancouver Cultural Centre's Young Playwrights Competition for her one-act play.
The Creative Writing Program welcomes Steven Galloway as an Assistant Professor to its prestigious Faculty Roster.
Congratulations to current MFA Creative Writing student, Kevin Spenst. Kevin has been shortlisted for the The Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. The prize is awarded annually to the best poetry manuscript by an emerging Canadian writer.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing current students and alumni comprised five of the ten finalists in the EVENT 2010 Creative Nonfiction competition. Congratulations to winner, Chris Urquhart!
Click here to read more
Congratulations MFA student, Jordan Hall! Jordan Hall is the winner of the Samuel French 2010 Canadian Playwrights contest for her play, Kayak.
MFA Creative Writing Alumni to be published in Coming Attractions 10, edited by Mark Anthony Jarman.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing MFA student Kaitlin Fontana has been chosen by Evelyn Lau to share her Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award.
Click here to read more
When Random House received Creative Writing MFA Alumna, Carol Shaben's thesis manuscript, they didn't wait long to acquire it.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing Optional Residency MFA Alumna, Sarah Selecky's short-story collection This Cake is For the Party, has been long-listed for this year's Giller Prize.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing Optional Residency MFA, Krista Foss featured in the National Post for Journey Prize Questionnaire.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing BFA alumni, Paolo Javier, named Poet Laureate of NYC's Queen.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing MFA Alumni and students, Andrew Clark, Oliver Kellhammer, Alex Leslie and Mitch Miyagawa received honorable mentions at the National Magazine Awards.
Click here to read more
Congratulations to Creative Writing MFA Alumnus, Dave Deveau, who received the 2010 Gordon Armstrong Playwright's Rent Award.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing MFA Alumna, Susan Olding, received the Reader's Choice Award at the Creative Non-Fiction Collective ceremony at the Banff Centre on April 24th, 2010 for her essays from Pathologies.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing Student, Nicola Campbell made the 2009 USBBY Outstanding International Books list for her Children's book Shin-Chi's Canoe.
Click here to read more
BFA Creative Writing Major, Karina Melendez's poem, The Sound was Editors' Choice in Arc Poetry Magazine's 14 Annual Poem of the Year Contest and published in Arc 63: Winter 2010.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing congratulates MFA Creative Writing Alumna Melanie Little on her new position at House of Anansi Press as Senior Editor of Canadian Fiction.
Click here to read more
Current MFA, Rebekah Lopata's play What if I Don't will be presented at the third annual award-winning EBE Ensemble, festival of new one act plays in New York.
Click here to read more
Creative Writing students dominate the StudentWrites! Playwriting Competition 2009. Gillian Bennett took home first prize in the competition for her play 'Sick or Swim', while Brie Wittman and Shannon Campbell took home the second and third prize.
Visit www.greenthumb.bc.ca
MFA Creative Writing alumna, Elena Johnson, makes the shortlist for the Malahat Open Season Awards and the ARC Poem of the Year Contest.
Creative Writing Optional Residency MFA Student, Daniel Griffin, is a 2009 Finalist for the Journey Prize"
Read More
Producer Michael Parker plans to use Comic Con award scholarship to obtain a Masters of Fine Arts in Film Production and Creative Writing degree at UBC.
Read More
Creative Writing Arnold and Nancy Cliff Writer in Residence: Steven Galloway.
Read More
Kazat Poet in Residence at the Historic Joy KogawaHouse: 21 year old Akerke Mussabekova is a third-year student in the translation department at al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the country's largest and premier university, situated in Almaty. She is being hosted by Historic Joy Kogawa House and funded by the HSBC Poet in the City cultural exchange program.
UBC's Creative Writing Program is sad to note the passing of poet and MFA Creative Writing alumna Kuldip Gill on Sunday, May 10, 2009. Her poetry has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies such as In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry and Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets.
Read more
UBC MFA in Creative Writing alumni Robert Paul Weston’s book, Zorgamazoo, named one of the Top 10 First Novels for Youth: 2008.
Read more or
visit the Zorgamazoo web site.
After a successful launch this past fall, the UBC Alumni Book Club is back for 2009.
Read more
Creative Writing MFA Alumna, Clea Young was recently nominated for the $10,000 McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for her short story Chaperone, published in Grain Magazine. This prize recognizes excellence in an emerging writer who has published a short story from an in-progress novel in a Canadian literary journal.
More on the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize>
Creative Writing MFA alumnus, Lee Henderson, received a nomination for the 2008 Writers’ Trust Awards for his novel The Man Game. Henderson, who will be competing with award winning authors for this $25,000 fiction prize won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for The Broken Record Technique.
More on the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize>
Short story, “The Riot and a Girl” written by University of British Columbia MFA Creative Writing alumna Tsering Lama, was nominated by the Malahat Review to be published in The Journey Prize Stories 20, an anthology that showcases the best of Canada’s new writers.
Click here for more information on the Journey Prize>
Former Creative Writing Writer in Residence, Miriam Toews receives a nomination for the 2008 Writers’ Trust Awards for her novel The Flying Troutmans. Towes, who will be competing with award winning authors for this $25,000 fiction prize won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction in 2004 for her novel A Complicated Kindness.
More on the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize>
Elena E. Johnson, MFA Creative Writing student, celebrates as her poem is published in the anthology Rocksalt – Contemporary Poets of British Columbia as well as an honorable mention in THIS magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt (2008).
More details
UBC's Creative Writing Program is sad to note the passing of Ted Rogers, President and CEO of Rogers Communications, a company that has supported our work in Creative Writing.
Creative Writing Instructor, Deborah Campbell takes gold at the 33rd Annual National Magazine Awards.
Click here to read more
Undergraduate Advisor: Steven Galloway
steven (dot) galloway (at) ubc (dot) ca
General Program Inquiries: Pat Rose, Secretary
Telephone: 604-822-0699
patrose (at) mail (dot) ubc (dot) ca
The Creative Writing Program offers a two-year studio program (which is taken in years three and four of an undergraduate degree). It is taught by faculty who work in a variety of literary and dramatic forms. The program leads to a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing or a joint degree with another department, in which Creative Writing serves as half of a double major.
The Creative Writing Program is unique within North America, offering workshops in nine different genres. The approximately 50 undergraduate students and 15 faculty (tenure-track, sessional and adjunct) in our program make up a lively literary community. Students can become involved with PRISM International, the Program's award-winning literary journal, and with a variety of reading series, publications, performances (including our annual theatre festival -- Brave New Play Rites) as well as literary events, both on-campus and in the diverse and sophisticated literary milieu of Vancouver.
During their course of study with us, students are required to take workshops in three of the following nine genre areas: fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, writing for children, translation, stage play, radio, screenwriting or song lyric and libretto.
Prospective students should note that, with respect to the Program's three-genre requirement, long and short fiction are considered a single genre fiction. Students are asked to specify their genres of interest on the application form.
Regular deadlines and quotas for workshops are set. Regular attendance and active participation in workshops is expected.
Currently under revision. No new applications accepted.
The Diploma Program in Applied Creative Non-Fiction is currently unavailable, and applications will not be accepted until further notice.
