Visiting Authors

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies invites accomplished novelists, essayists, poets, screenwriters, and playwrights present their work through the public FCCS Reading Series at the Okanagan Regional Library and other venues around the Okanagan. The Writer-in-Residence program promotes Canadian writing and literature to Okanagan residents and provides emerging writers with the opportunity to get feedback on their creative work.

Annual Sharon Thesen Lecture

Sharon Thesen was the first full professor in the Department of Creative Studies and is now professor emerita here at UBC. She is also a renowned Canadian poet and editor. The Creative Writing program at UBC intends for the Sharon Thesen lecture to acknowledge her contributions to British Columbian and Canadian literature and to the Creative Writing Program at UBC Okanagan. In her honor, a different writer each year will give a lecture that tackles key issues of contemporary writing, poetics, and Canadian literature. By recording each lecture, we will create a wonderful resource of contemporary thinking by writers.

The 2024 Annual Sharon Thesen Lecture will be presented by Anne Fleming on Wednesday, September 25. Participants Anne Fleming and Sharon Thesen will be present in the UBC Okanagan Special Collections and Archives (OSC), as space is limited in the OSC, the public is invited to attend this event in a virtual platform.

When asked about the topic of her lecture, Anne Fleming thought back to her own experiences hearing Sharon Thesen speak:

The Sharon Thesen Lecture is an opportunity to tackle the persistent big questions about writing: what’s it for, why do we do it, what do we love about it. The big questions preoccupying me right now are: How is fiction true? and Why does beauty matter? which also means asking, What is beauty?.” – Anne Fleming

Title: truth beauty
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Zoom

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View past lectures below. 

Writer in Residence

Shelly Wood

Shelley Wood

The UBCO writer in residence program promotes Canadian writing and literature to Okanagan residents and provides emerging writers with the opportunity to get feedback on their creative work.  Shelley Wood was the 2024 Writer-in-Residence, and spent two weeks on campus in March 2024 offering feedback to students and local writers and offering a public talk.

Originally from Vancouver, BC, Shelley Wood did her undergraduate degree in English Literature at McGill and her graduate degree in Journalism at UBC. Her short stories and creative nonfiction have been published in Grain, Room, Causeway Lit, Canadian Notes & Queries, Phoebe, the Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly, Bath Flash Fiction, Freefall, and the Saturday Evening Post. Her debut novel, The Quintland Sisters (William Morrow, 2019), was an instant #1 Canadian bestsellerand her second novel, The Leap Year Gene, will be published in August 2024 by Harper Collins Canada and Union Square Press (US).  She divides her time between her home in Kelowna, BC, and her work as a medical journalist and editorial director for the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York, NY.

Stay tuned for details on the 2025 Writer-in-Residence.

Past Visiting Authors