This is
the last newsletter for what has been a wonderful year, which began with Ian
McEwan in conversation with Matt Ridley and will conclude with John Burnside
and Kathleen Jamie. Several events were so oversubscribed that other,
larger venues had to be found. There are still places available on the Creative
Writing Summer School and events are already confirmed for the forthcoming
autumn season. In the meantime, NCLA wishes everyone an enjoyable summer and
the newsletter will be back in September.
Imagining the future has characterised several events, beginning with Ian McEwan’s reading from Solar, echoed in Farewell Glacier, jointly presented by poet Nick Drake, visual artist Matt Clark and sound artist Max Eastley. This event focussed on the diminishing Arctic ice cap.
The most far
reaching of NCLA’s events this year has been the One Book project in
conjunction with the Booker Prize Foundation, which included distribution of
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to all new students, workshops
and a reading by Ishiguro in Newcastle’s City Hall.
Another
Booker Prize winner who NCLA welcomed this year was Roddy Doyle, who spoke
about his new venture, Fighting
Words, which was established to encourage creative writing by
students of all ages.
The range of writers both reading from their work and talking about it has been remarkable this year, spanning from David Almond and Anne Fine talking about children’s literature to Marilynne Robinson reflecting on her writing processes. Jeanette Winterson and Nuruddin Farah also enjoyed attentive audiences. There was an opportunity to see a rehearsed reading of Nuruddin’s Antigone in Somalia before Nuruddin’s Leverhulme Fellowship came to a conclusion and he returned to South Africa.
NCLA was very sorry not to be able to welcome Diana Athill in March this year due to her ill health. It is hoped that Jackie Kay will be able to interview Diana at her home and that a video of this interview will then be available to view on the NCLA website.
Diana’s reading was to mark the culmination of the Coming of Age: The Art & Science of Ageing exhibition and associated events at Great North Museum: Hancock, which was part of a year-long events programme to launch Newcastle University’s Changing Age initiative and included a series of well-received workshops run by NCLA.
Saying
the World, a
festival celebrating women poets, which began with a reading from Anne
Stevenson and led into a day of workshops, talks and discussions hosted by
Colette Bryce and also including Cynthia Fuller, Linda France, Anna Woodford,
Carola Luther, Jo Shapcott, Deryn Rees-Jones and Katharine Towers, was
another of the Centre’s successes for this year.
A key benefit for Newcastle University School of English students is the opportunity to meet some of the visiting writers in a workshop setting. For example, they were able to hear about the approach to teaching creative writing at the University of Iowa from Marilynne Robinson.
Writers closely associated
with NCLA continue to win acclaim for their work. Jackie Kay’s Red Dust
Road has been shortlisted for the Scottish Book Award; Sean
O’Brien’s most recent collection, November, was the April Poetry Book
Society Choice; and Jo Shapcott won the Costa Prize for her collection, Of
Mutability.
John
Burnside and Kathleen Jamie will be reading their poetry on Friday 10th June at 7pm in G5, Percy Building, Newcastle University. John Burnside is
both an award-winning poet and an accomplished novelist, praised by Hilary Mantel as ‘a master of language’.
Formerly a computer software engineer, he now teaches at the University of St
Andrews. In 2010 his book The Hunt in the Forest, was shortlisted for
the Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Kathleen
Jamie’s prose collection, Findings, was also
shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Council Book Award, in 2006. Richard Mabey
said of it: ‘This is
as close as writing gets to a conversation with the natural world.’ This event is
programmed in association with Newcastle University’s sustainability research
theme and programme.
Tickets (£6/£4) Please
contact Jill Callender for further details: Jill.Callender@ncl.ac.uk,
0191 222 6233.
Places are still available
for the School of English Creative Writing Summer School, which takes place
from Monday June 27th – Friday July 1st 2011. Further details are available
on the NCLA website.
To book a place, or for further information, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
NCLA continues to attract the most exciting of
writers to Newcastle. Already confirmed for the next Semester are Paul
Farley and Michael Symonds
Roberts, who will
be presenting their book Edgelands (a Radio Four Book of the Week) and Andrea Levy, who will be
discussing her novel The Long Song - shortlisted for the 2010
Man Booker Prize and for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction (to be
announced 18th June 2011) - with Jackie Kay
The BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival, in which both Bill Herbert and Sean O’Brien participated last year, is due to return to The Sage Gateshead later this year and we are hoping that there may be news to come of poetry commissioned from some familiar NCLA names – watch this space!
NCLA is also pleased to announce that Professor Sean
O’Brien will be presenting this year’s Newcastle / Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures
in December.
As well as being happy to report on staff successes, such as those
recently enjoyed by Jackie Kay, Sean O’Brien and Jo Shapcott, NCLA is always
delighted to hear news of current students and its alumni so please do get in
touch to share details of your publications and awards.
NCLA relies on its enthusiastic audiences for
feedback about the whole programme and appreciate your thoughtful and
sensitive questioning of writers as well as your responses and ideas. Thank
you for your support. We look forward to seeing you in the autumn.