The Department of English is offering the Creative Writing Minor for the first time this fall. Creative writing has long been a part of SFU’s reputation, and the English Department has been home to some of Canada’s most important and innovative poets and writers, including past faculty members Robin Blaser (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize), George Bowering (Canada’s first Parliamentary Poet Laureate), and Roy Miki (Governor General’s Award winner and noted Japanese Redress movement organizer). This writer-critic legacy continues in the Department’s faculty, which boasts multi-award winning novelist David Chariandy and multi-award winning poets Clint Burnham and Stephen Collis. The Department’s Writer-in-Residence program, inaugurated in 2004, has also hosted a who’s-who of innovative Canadian authors. English Department faculty writers and writers-in-residence are highly visible in the local, national, and international communities, delivering public readings and lectures, participating in festivals, and engaging with public issues in dynamic and often interdisciplinary ways.
The creative writing minor will eventually supersede our current Creative Writing Certificate. Students currently enrolled in the certificate should speak with Kathryn Ward about how best to proceed with the certificate.
Students may also choose to take creative writing courses as part of their English major or minor or as elective courses while pursuing a different major or minor, as long as they meet the prerequisites.
Read our story in SFU News!
Tina Do is a Vancouver-based poet, unashamed dinosaur aficionado, and MA student at Simon Fraser University. She is honoured to receive her first publication credit from The /tƐmz/ Review. These days, you can catch her reading up on whether or not dinosaurs had lips and trying not to over-love her plants.
Read Tina's poem, "i tell my mother everything"
Carleigh Baker: "War of Attrition" from Bad Endings
Clint Burnham: "No Poems on Stolen Native Land"
David Chariandy: an excerpt from Brother
Stephen Collis: a section from "Reading Wordsworth in the Tar Sands” part of Once in Blockadia
Jeff Derksen: From: The Present