Starting in July 2019, UBC’s creative writing department will bring on a new assistant professor of Indigenous creative writing, who is expected to begin teaching in September.
While there is currently an introductory course on Indigenous writing, this will mark an expansion of the current Indigenous-focused curriculum to likely include more upper-level undergraduate courses and even potentially some graduate level courses.
“The position came out of a number of conversations among faculty and students and in the literary community at large,” said department Chair Alix Ohlin. “Indigenous writers are some of the most exciting and talented voices around these days, so it made a lot of sense to try to find ways to represent that in our program.”
Beyond just the courses offered, the faculty and students of UBC creative writing have been active recently with extracurricular events centred around Indigenous writing.
In March, the event Writing the Future featured notable Indigenous authors and UBC alumni Eden Robinson, Katherena Vermette and Jordan Abel. According to Ohlin, the event was “extremely successful and well-attended” — Eden Robinson even returned in May to receive an honorary doctorate degree from UBC.
The graduate series Locution last year hosted a reading featuring Indigenous writers which, according to UBC’s creative writing website, was “by far the best attended and most successful Locution event of the academic year and will take a long time to beat.”
As these events have been successful in the past, it only makes sense that students and faculty continue to move forward in this direction.
“I think there’s a real thirst and real excitement around those voices,” said Ohlin. “Our hope is that we can build on the momentum on some of those things to try to do even more work to centre Indigenous voices in our community and in our program.”