The Research Centre for Contemporary Writing

The Centre For Contemporary Writing is the largest of the School's research centres and is cross-disciplinary in character, involving staff and students from the Departments of Creative Writing & Publishing and English Literature & Cultural Studies. Its aims are to encourage, develop and support the research of its members, to produce new creative and critical works for publication, broadcast and other forms of dissemination, and to nurture and sustain a rich research environment. The centre is particularly interested in the possibilities of collaborative research projects both within the university and outside. The Centre is involved in the International Research Partnership involving Columbia College, Chicago, and UTS Sydney. It will promote major events at the 2011 NAWE conference, and the 2012 AWP conference in Chicago. The Centre sponsors a strand of events at the Bath Literature Festival and the Stand Up Poetry Series of public poetry readings in Bath. It supports a series of creative writing days for schools across the South West. Current and future projects include support for a touring production of Elizabeth Wright’s play Vanessa and Virginia and an associated conference on creative adaptations inspired by the life and work of the Bloomsbury Group, and MIX, a conference exploring all aspects of transmedia writing.

Centre Directors

• Prof. Gerard Woodward: Booker shortlisted novelist, poet and short story writer.
• Prof. Tim Liardet: T.S.Eliot Prize shortlisted Poet and critic.

Staff

• Dr. Tracy Brain, Senior Lecturer in English: Interests include Contemporary Women's Writing.
• Celia Brayfield, Novelist.
• Prof. Gavin Cologne-Brookes, Professor of American Literature: Authority on the work of Joyce Carol Oates.
• Lucy English, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing: Novelist and performance poet.
• Dr. Carrie Etter, poet and critic.
• Dr. Rebecca Feasey.
• Dr. Greg Garrard.
• Dr. Tessa Hadley, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing: Novelist and short story writer.
• Prof. William Hughes, Professor of Gothic Studies: Interests include contemporary Gothic, vampire fictions, paganism and detective fiction.
• Richard Kerridge, critic and nature writer.
• Dr. Ellen McWilliams, Senior Lecturer in English: Interests include twentieth-century women's writing; writing and diasporic identity; life writing; the short story; Irish, American, and Canadian literature; and the reception of European literary models in North American literature.
• Dr. Steve May, Head of Department, Creative Writing: Radio dramatist and children's author.
• Prof. Tim Middleton, Head of School: Interests include Anglo-American modernism and contemporary British and American fiction and culture.
• Prof. John Newsinger.
• Andrew Miller, Novelist.
• Dr. Mimi Thebo, Novelist.
• Dr. Elizabeth Wright, Senior Lecturer in English: Interests include Virginia Woolf, Modernist fiction, Late 19th and early 20th century British and European theatre.

Research Students

• Ellie Evans is writing a collection of poems and a critical study of the poetry of Pascale Petite.
• Samantha Harvey is writing a novel and researching the relationship between philosophy and the novel.
• Nikita Lalwani is writing a novel and researching nostalgia in contemporary Anglo-Indian fiction.
• Linda Ruhemann is writing a collection of short stories and is researching the endings of short stories.
• Rachel Bentham is writing a historical novel and researching representations of aboriginal people in the work of Kate Grenville.
• Ian Breckon writes historical fiction; his PhD project is a novel based on an incident in the nineteenth-century British Raj.
• Julie Hayman is a novelist; her PhD project is an experimental novel about a train crash.
• Louise Johncox writes lifewriting; her PhD project is a personal memoir woven around the history of a teashop.

The Centre has worked with many visiting speakers and guest lecturers, including D.B.C.Pierre, Toby Litt, John Burnside, Tony Lopez, Les Murray, Philip Gross, Nick Hornby, Ashley Pharoah, Christopher Nicholson, Fay Weldon, Helen Dunmore, Fiona Sampson, George Szirtes, Peter Porter and Philip Pullman.

Events

The Centre regularly supports a series of events at the Bath Literature Festival, including the hugely successful Voices in the City events introduced in 2011, and the popular Daily Poem. In July 2012 it will run a conference exploring all aspects of transmedia writing.

In March Prof. Gavin Cologne Brookes was in Chicago to conduct an interview with literary icon Joyce Carol Oates on the craft of writing as part of Columbia College's Story Week Conference.