The Grapevine - UBC Creative Writing News

The Grapevine is now on vacation for the summer semester.  See you in September!

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UBC Creative Writing MFA alumnus Lee Henderson has won the BC Book Award for his novel The Man Game:

On a recent Vancouver Sunday afternoon, a young man stumbles upon a secret sport invented more than a century before, at the birth of his city. In 1886, out of the smouldering ashes of the great fire that destroyed much of the city, a former vaudeville performer and two lumberjacks invent a new sport that will change the course of the fledgling city’s history. Thus begins The Man Game, Lee Henderson’s epic tale of loved requited and not, that crosses the contemporary and historical in an extravagant, anarchistic retelling of the early days of a pioneer town on the edge of the known world. Lee Henderson is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Broken Record Technique and is a contributing editor to the arts magazines Border Crossings and Contemporary. He lives in Vancouver.

Congrats Lee!

If you’ve ever wondered what Lyric and Libretto is all about, here’s your chance to see (and hear) a year’s worth of musical and lyrical inspiration and experimentation from UBC Creative Writing prof Meryn Cadell’s undergrad and grad classes.

Event Details

Wednesday, Apr 29th at 8pm.
Little Mountain Studio
195 East 26th Ave (just west of Main Street)

Drinks to be drunk. Music to tap your feet to. A guaranteed great show.

http://www.littlemountainstudios.ca

PRISM International Magazine presents poetry readings by Jacob Scheier (winner of the 2008 Governor General’s award for More to Keep Us Warm) and Sonnet L’Abbé (author of Killarnoe and A Strange Relief ) on April 30th in Vancouver.

Event Details:

Thursday, April 30 (7:30pm - 10:30 pm)
Pulp Fiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Readings will begin at 8:00pm. Beer available for purchase.

Visit http://www.prismmagazine.ca for more details.

UBC Creative Writing Presents: Five Minute Fury!

An evening of readings short and (sometimes) sweet from students of the UBC Optional-Residency MFA Program - Canada’s first (and only) distance-education Graduate program in creative writing.

Details
Monday May 11th
Doors at 7:30pm
Readings start at 8pm

Venue: Supermarket
268 Augusta Avenue
Toronto, ON
www.supermarkettoronto.com

FREE - All Welcome

Recent MFA grad Dave Deveau’s thesis play – Map of the West — just received an Honourable Mention in the Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition, one of the biggest playwriting competitions in Canada.

Full details: http://www.queensu.ca/drama/voaden/Voaden.htm

Congrats Dave!

As part of the BC Book and Magazine Week, the Main Street Literary Tour takes place this April 23rd:

Main Street is the home of dozens of artist-run galleries, quirky cafés, boutique shopping and local writers. Your neighbourhood tour guides, writer, filmmaker and performance artist Amber Dawn, and poet Jennica Harper, lead you to various Main Street hot spots for an evening of arts and literary exploration. Select Tour A or Tour B, or mix and match sessions from each!

Full details: http://www.bcbookandmagazineweek.com/?page_id=58

Event Details:

Thursday, April 23 (6 PM - 9 PM)
Main Street, Various venues, Vancouver

Two UBC Creative Writing MFA students have been nominated for awards at this year’s Leo Awards:

MFA student Peg Campbell’s film — “Your Mother Should Know” — has been nominated for Best Documentary.

MFA alumnus Terry Miles’s feature film — “When Life Was Good” — has been nominated for Best Feature Length Drama as well as Lead Performance by a Male in a Feature Length Drama and Lead Performance by a Female in a Feature Length Drama.

Full details: http://www.leoawards.com/nominees_2009.html

Congrats to Peg and Terry!

MFA alumni Laisha Rosnau, Andrew Binks and Elizabeth Bachinsky will launch their new books in Vancouver on May 5th.

Event Details:

Tuesday, May 5th (7:30 pm)
Heritage Hall
3102 Main Street, Vancouver
Admission free.

The UBC Arts Undergraduate Society’s newspaper — The Underground — is the only satirical newspaper on campus, and is distributed at UBC on a monthly basis. The Underground selects new editors every year, so as to keep the editing staff fresh, and give new writers on campus the chance to try out for these positions.

The responsibilities of the editors are as follows:

- Networking with the writers (via email, as well as holding meetings once a month)

- Writing articles as well as collecting articles from the fellow writers up until the deadline of the upcoming issue

- Editing the issues (this can take place in the Underground office in Buchanan D on the desktop, or from home on the Underground laptop)

More details after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Octopus Books will hold an open reading period for full-length poetry manuscripts in April. Manuscripts must be submitted between by April 30, 2009. Full details: Octopus Books

Flying Guillotine Press, maker of handmade poetry chapbooks, is looking for submissions in April. Full Details: Flying Guillotine Press

The Antigonish Review announces two writing contests: the 9th Annual Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest, and the 5th Annual Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize.  May 31st deadline, $2400 in prizes. Full details: The Antigonish Review

The Fieldstone Review, an online literary journal based at the University of Saskatchewan, is currently accepting submissions for its Spring 2009 edition. Full Details: The Fieldstone Review

Brave New Play Rites — UBC’s festival of original one-act plays — begins this Wednesday, April 1st and runs until April 5th:

A quadrapelgic woman longs for her hotrod. Frankenstein’s monster copes with his dysfunctional family. Knives are thrown. Public hair, exposed. Lies, revealed. Come join us for this fearlessly creative UBC tradition, an opportunity to see the new work of emerging playwrights, directors, and performers. The show features twelve new, daring one-act plays, each written, directed, and designed by students from UBC’s acclaimed Theatre and Creative Writing programs.

The students work under the direction of professors John Cooper, Bryan Wade, and Jayson McLean.

This year’s show includes plays written by both MFA and BFA creative writing students. Eclectic and bold, these pieces challenge and entertain with a mix of comedy and drama. This is where Canada’s groundbreaking theatre is born!

Event Details:

Brave New Play Rites
April 1 till 5th (8pm each night)
Dorothy Somerset Studios @ UBC
6361 University Blvd, Vancouver

For full details, please visit http://bravenew.ca

Telefilm Canada’s Western Region is once again in search of fresh, new talent.

They want to hear from filmmakers here in our own backyard with new projects ready for development, production and marketing support. If you haven’t worked with them in the past, and are curious about Telefilm’s Funds and Programs, please send them your pitch.

HERE’S HOW:

Telefilm Pitch Week in Vancouver takes place the week of April 13th, 2009.

Review the Funds and Programs on our website at http://telefilm.gc.ca.

Submit a one-page synopsis of your project via email to Julianne Lockhart at lockhaj@telefilm.gc.ca by Thursday, April 9th, 2009.

Please use Telefilm Pitch Week as the subject line of your email

A Telefilm representative will call you to confirm your meeting time. All meetings will be between 30 and 45 minutes in length.

All meetings will take place at the Telefilm Canada Vancouver office at 609 Granville, Suite 410 from 2pm to 5pm on April 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th.

MFA alumni Fiona Lam’s latest book of poetry — Enter the Chrysanthemum — will be launched April 8th in Vancouver:

Enter the Chrysanthemum is a luminous collection of poems about family, love and loss. Employing precise imagery and concise language, Lam plumbs and mines ordinary events and experiences to find a central core of poetic insight and sometimes harrowing truth. Whether written from the vantage point of a young child observing her parents, a single parent struggling to raise a child, or a daughter watching a parent’s decline and death, these poems reconnect us to what it means to be human. Enter the Chrysanthemum, is Lam’s second book of poetry.

Event Details:

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 (7:30 pm)
The Bistro @ The Sylvia Hotel
1154 Gilford Street, Vancouver

For more information, please phone (604) 876-8710

The UBC Creative Writing Program presents:

Fiction: At The Edge Of The World

An evening of prose readings by UBC Creative Writing Program Majors.

Event Details

Fiction: At The End Of The World
Thursday, April 9th (7 – 10 PM)
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
(Lillooet Room)
1961 East Mall, UBC

All Welcome. Admission free.

Event details also listed on Facebook!

With Readings By:

Kirstin Amundrud, Shannon Campbell, Amy Cunningham
Stephanie Chou, Adam Douba, Kelly Dycavinu
Travis Fleming, Allison Friebertshauser, Claire Gibson
Meredith Hambrock, Carla Hartenberger, Michelle Kaeser
Lucie Krajcova, Happy Kreter, Bradley Locke
Rebekah Lopata, Katie Mason, Allison Mills
Eitan Olevsky, Alisha Pelton, Fabina Rajwani
Adrian St.Louis, Afton Schindel, Nicholas Stenner
Marie-Helene Westgate, Alexa Woods, Shauna Wootton, Lindsay Wong