Irina Kovalyova Writers in Residence Archives
Irina Kovalyova has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from Brown University, a doctoral degree in Microbiology from Queen’s University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University. She has previously interned for NASA and worked for two years as a forensic analyst in New York City. She was born in Russia and currently lives in Vancouver.
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July 01, 2015Keep Going
This is my last post as the writer-in-residence for this website. It’s been a lot of fun. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading my blogs as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.What remains to be said? ...
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June 30, 2015
Lollipops (Take 2)
Keep going, the poster read. Your legs will forgive you…eventually.On Sunday, I ran my first half-marathon. It might not seem like a big deal, but there were hills and it was hot. So hot in fact that ...
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June 27, 2015Can We Hear a Cell?
When asked recently about influences on my writing, I expounded on literary things. But the exercise also led me to think about questions I come across in my day job as a scientist.A former professor ...
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June 25, 2015
Stuff Happens
The other day I picked my almost-7-year-old daughter from school. I asked her, with my usual level of enthusiasm, “How was your day?” “Good,” she said, with her usual lack thereof. “What did ...
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June 24, 2015
Why I Read Obituaries
To get out of a dry writing spell several years ago, I had to take drastic measures. To take drastic measures meant calling my writer friend. In Ontario.She was shocked but not surprised when I called ...
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June 20, 2015
Bravery Through Bestsellers
In a recent cultural comment in The New Yorker, South African-born social anthropologist and writer Ceridwen Dovey investigates whether reading can make us happier. She describes a session with a bibliotherapist ...
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June 18, 2015On Buttery Butter, Compress to Impress, Less Is More, Etc.
To indicate her displeasure with overwritten sentences, my grandmother used the phrase "buttery butter." What she meant by it was this: if you write "butter" it’s clear already what you’re talking ...
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June 13, 2015
Twere Easier for God to Make Entirely New Men…
Exactly 199 years ago today, during a stormy night at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley had a waking dream that gave birth to Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. How do we know? Astronomers. ...
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June 11, 2015
Why I Am in Love with Margaret Atwood
I wanted to do something different, so midway through last term, I wrote a proposal for Mutants and Monsters, a new science fiction course.Since I teach biochemistry for a living and have been reading ...
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June 09, 2015
Canadians in the New Yorker
If you missed the piece in the National Post last Saturday by Nadine Fladd on how Canadians changed The New Yorker, you should check it out. Coinciding with release of The New Yorker’s celebrated summer ...