• Announcements

    ✱ TGS Issue 7.1 Launch Party! ✱

    We’re back!!!! The English Students’ Association and The Garden Statuary, UBC’s undergraduate literary journal, are excited to welcome all of you to the launch of Issue 7.1!  Please join us on Thursday, November 30 from 5-7 pm for: 🍂 Free food!! 🍂 Readings from published undergraduates!! 🍂 Mingling with editors, authors, and artists! 🍂 A chance to purchase or win past print editions! This event is open to everyone from the UBC community and beyond. Please feel free to invite your friends, family, or even complete strangers! 🍂 TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 🍂 The Garden Statuary recognizes that this event is taking place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the…

  • Blog

    Tips for Getting Over Writer’s Block

    As someone who loves to write creatively, I’ve encountered my fair share of writer’s block. And as someone who has had to write countless essays, I’ve also encountered the dreaded blank page, staring at me, taunting me with its blank-ness. So, I’m here to try and give you some of my tips for writer’s block, whether creative or academic. 1. Start small Trying to sit down and bang out a whole essay (or whole story/poem/whatever you are trying to write) is just unrealistic. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your great piece of writing shouldn’t be either. If you feel like you’re stuck, try to start…

  • Blog

    How I Chose My Pen Name: On Racialized Names and the English Literary Canon

    Hello, my name is Charmaine Anne Li. That is my full legal name on all my documents, and everyone calls me “Charmaine.” However, I sign off on all my literary pieces as “Li Charmaine Anne.” Truth is, I’ve always been a little sensitive as to how “Asian-sounding” my name is. “Li,” after all, is the most common surname in the world, and is almost iconically Chinese. Growing up, the books I read and the movies I saw with Asian names attached to them were almost always exclusively about “Asian issues.” This gave me the impression that Asian writers can only ever write about Asian Issues and nothing else: no medieval adventure…

  • Blog

    Interview with Laura Bitterlich – Author of Shapeshifters Part 2

    I sat down to have an interview with Shapeshifters author Laura Bitterlich, who is an accomplished writer in Germany. At just nineteen, she is a published author and an intelligent thinker of various social issues including gender and sexuality. Her writing is mature, well-thought out and gripping. Focusing her energies on the genre of fantasy, she pays keen attention to her readership and uses her big imagination to transport us all to the universe of Shapeshifters. In this part of the interview, she relays her in-depth views about her ideas on relevant social issues. You use your writing to address social issues as well. An example would be Leara serving…