Vancouver Island University Department of Creative Writing and Journalism

04/28/2026

Jay Ruzesky; Last Post. Retiring from a 36 year long career is a process, and one of the nicest parts is having people say nice things about you. It’s like being alive at your own funeral. What a gift it has been to me that my work all these years has been so creative. I’ve loved having a chance to talk to people about my love for writing and film (and usually to a captive audience!). It has been amazing to see so many students doing so many brilliant things with words, and it has been a privilege to work with an honourable group of colleagues who are an inspiration, and with heroic support staff. Lucky, lucky me. Thank you all. I’ll be keeping an eye out for your good works and good deeds. Class dismissed.

03/13/2026

03/02/2026

The fresh, new VIU Reads hardcover books for 2026 are now available at the VIU Library, Nanaimo campus. Come check them out. Please: check them out.

The VIU Reads initiative allows us to stock the library with new books each year and provides students and faculty with access to titles that may not be readily available at local libraries.

Come on down. We’ve got fiction, non-fiction, scripts, prizewinners, runners-up, Booker books, Giller books, blockbusters, weird niche memoirs, books on AI, novels that will help you forget about AI for a while, and even that massive new biography of James Baldwin. We’ve got the latest Pynchon and a book on the Coast Salish woolly dog. How’s that for range?

Here’s a list of all the 73 new titles:

https://viu.catalogue.libraries.coop/eg/opac/results?depth=0;bookbag=3138113;page=0;locg=1581

02/06/2026

All welcome at the VIU CREW Spring Faculty Reading— profs reading from their new work. Thursday 12 February at 5:30 in 355 / 211

11/06/2025

In the spirit of Humans of New York Humans of VIU is a collective digital storytelling project of CREW 441 Fall 2025. Scroll down for more posts or follow us:

11/06/2025

"I went to V.I.U back when it was called Malaspina. I started with a couple of calculus classes because I was good at that in high-school, then I realized that 8am classes after nights out drinking and hockey wouldn’t work for me.

Malaspina was the closest school to Port Hardy. It was through anthropology, which I selected randomly, that I found what I wanted to do in school. This incredible teacher, Gary Tunnell, told the best stories ever, and I was just like `I want to do this.'

I met my spouse in undergrad then moved to Ottawa to get my M.A, and when I came back it was random that I met an old professor shopping in Costco. He told me “We have a job opening in anthropology,” and I took the job. Teaching in anthropology and sociology, I’ve been here on and off since about 2004.

With teaching, it’s hard to think of a specific moment that’s been interesting. When students reach out after their degree and to thank me for how their life is going is a rare moment. Those moments of somebody changing the way they think about the world because of what you've shown them and explained to them, that kind of sounds pretty cool.

11/06/2025

"I graduated high-school and I wanted to go to university, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I decided to justify it: I’d take a year off and study what I thought I was interested in to make sure that I was actually interested in it. So, I did computer science, just for a little bit, in my spare time. And I realized it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue.

And then I went to Top Bridge Park, and I was reading some of the signs out there. There was a sign about how they were digging channels alongside Englishman river—the channels are to help baby salmon mature safely before coming back to the river. As part of that project, they had some fencing around areas that they originally let people walk through, because dogs intruded a lot on the salmon’s life cycle. And I was interested in that: it seemed hands-on, not too complex. I thought something in that realm—making an impact environmentally—was kind of cool. So then I decided on the idea of getting a job that would be environmentally focused.

And at VIU, it’s muey bueno. I like the campus. There’s enough variety; there are trees, I’m not just walking through a parking lot. I like walking between classes, I like the fresh air; I like that there’s a community. People talk about issues, raise awareness, get involved. And it’s nice, because a lot of people expect the community to come to them, which isn’t always realistic. I mean, I’m relatively busy. So, the organizations, the goals, the awareness-raising, are all directly in your face on campus. It’s not out of the way; you can contribute. Which is cool."

11/06/2025

"Right now all I can think about is being in debt, and the fact that I've been trying to get my student loans for the past month, and now apparently student aid is on strike. That's kind of the hard part.

There are a lot of things in this world at the moment that are making people feel quite hopeless, but I've seen a lot of creative people and just people in general sort of take that hopelessness and kind of be like, I'm gonna lock in. I'm going to get the work done. If I want to see something done, I'm gonna just make it get done.

But I do feel like a lot of people have trouble getting their own work out there, no matter what the medium is. It feels unreachable. I also feel like we have so many resources here, whether that's through each other or through the teachers that we've met, or just through say, local events like the Fringe Festival, where you can get yourself on stage or you can go to events where you can meet all these other great writers from around the Island or even from around B.C.. And Vancouver is right next to us as well. There’s so much potential and so many avenues that you can follow. I feel like if you want to get out there, you absolutely can.

As a writer, the entire life that I've set up for myself now is that I'm going to constantly be going into rooms and saying, `You should like my ideas. Can you please fund my ideas? Will you please give me money for my ideas?' And so, if I'm coming into the room and I'm saying, `give me money,' but I don't believe in my ideas, or myself as a writer, then I'm already setting myself up for failure. I also feel like there's like such a stigma around walking around and confidently telling people that you're good at something. I like to write now on purpose, so that's cool and new. I actually have things that I like to do in my life, so that's awesome."

11/05/2025

“It has only been about a year and a half since I wanted to pursue some sort of legal studies. This was about two months before I graduated high school. But I feel that it is a great career plan. So far, I find that VIU is great! I love the teachers. Though there are two things I don’t really appreciate: the trek to the school every morning, and I didn’t expect that the majority of what we learned in class won’t be applicable to exams. With most of it being the textbook that I have to read through frequently. I’ve learnt to really appreciate the amount of sleep I got before I started both working and going to school, but through all of that I still feel motivated to continue through my assignments. If I could go back in time and tell my past self of how far this motivation can take me, I would. High school was rough and I feel like before coming here I wouldn’t hand in many assignments and as I keep learning here at VIU I am wishing that I didn’t do that back then.”