In 1946, the poet Earle Birney, then an English professor at the University of British Columbia, broke new ground by establishing a single course within the English department, one for the writer “naked in academe.” He went on to found the UBC Creative Writing Department in 1963 – Canada’s first university writing program, a learner-centered, interdisciplinary experience that has produced many of Canada’s finest writers and poets. 
Celebrating fifty years of creative writing at UBC, Naked in Academe showcases an impressive diversity of literary voices that have grown out of the program. From short stories to poetry, narrative essays to scripts for theatre and film, herein is a dynamic collection of writing from across Canada that, like the program itself, is at once contemporary and vibrant, relevant and incisive.