This will be another full and exciting academic year for NCLA, with writers of international reputation presenting readings, lectures and workshops, and the Centre will deepen the partnerships it is forging with other organisations in the north-east. It has been inspiring to witness the quality of the readings, enthusiasm of audiences, the creativity of writers attending short courses, and the continuing successes of students, staff and alumni to date.
NCLA
Director, Professor Linda Anderson, is currently on research leave to
complete a book about Elizabeth Bishop. She has been invited by the Royal
Society of Literature to give the TLS lecture on
Elizabeth Bishop. This will mark the centenary of Bishop’s birth and will
take place at The Courtauld Institute of Art on Monday 17th October at 7pm.
Linda is staying in close contact with NCLA and will be attending many of the
readings. During Linda Anderson’s absence, Dr Viccy Adams, a NCLA alumnus,
will be working for the Centre as Creative Writing Development Officer.
NCLA has been delighted to hear of the recent great
success of two of its Professors of Creative Writing. It was announced at the Edinburgh
International Book Festival that Jackie
Kay has won the Scottish
Mortgage Investment Trust Book Award for her memoir Red Dust Road (2010). Red
Dust Roadcan now be downloaded as an audiobook from
Audible.
Having
already been a Poetry Book Society choice earlier this year, Sean
O’Brien’s most
recent collection, November (2011), has now been shortlisted for the Forward Prize
for the Best Collection, a prize that he has won three times previously.
On
September 17th sixty writers took part in a series of creative writing
workshops run by NCLA’s online publication Friction Magazine. in aid of the
East Africa famine. The day was jointly sponsored by NCLA and the Faculty of
Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland. All the workshops
were led by successful writers who generously donated their time, including
Radio 4 Saturday Live poet in residence Kate Fox who also ran the Great North
Run as its poet in residence. All the workshops sold out and the next issue
of frictionmagazine.co.uk will be devoted to work written on the day. There
is still an opportunity for work to be submitted by writers who could not
participate in the workshops. The deadline is October 1st, and
details of how to submit are on the frictionmagazine.co.uk website.
Newcastle University is delighted to be working with the
Booker Prize Foundation for the second consecutive year on its project to
encourage and celebrate the power of fiction with 3,000 books to be
distributed across Newcastle University’s campus. The One Book that everyone
will be encouraged to read and discuss this year is Andrea Levy’s The Long Song (Headline Review, 2010) and the project will culminate at Northern Stage with
Andrea Levy in conversation with Jackie Kay on Tuesday 25th October at 7pm. Tickets (£6/£4) are available
online from the webstore. Tickets are free for Newcastle
University students, but booking is essential. Alternatively, call Melanie
Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
A Facebook page has been set up
to keep you up to date with associated events. To book a free place at one of
the following reading groups, please email Juliana Mensah at j.mensah@ncl.ac.uk:
6th October - 6.30pm-7.30pm: Newcastle City Library
12th October - 6.30pm-7.30pm: Northern Stage, Barras Bridge, Newcastle
17th October - 6pm-7pm: Waterstone’s Bookshop, Monument, Newcastle
19th October - 7.15pm-8.15pm: Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle
As Linda
France’s Leverhulme Trust artist in residence position at Moorbank,
Newcastle University’s botanic garden draws to a close, we invite you to join
us at 6.00pm on Wednesday 19th October, to come Through the Garden
Gate to celebrate the work Linda made there, which includes a
sculpture in the Desert House and an illustrated pamphlet of poems. We are
also proud to announce that Colette Bryce will be starting as the Leverhulme
Trust artist in residence at the Dove Marine Laboratory, and Viccy Adams will
be Leverhulme Trust artist in residence at the School of Informatics,
University of Edinburgh for 2011/12.
To book a free place at Moorbank, please call Melanie Birch on 0191
222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
NCLA’s
highly-rated series of short courses begins again this semester with
workshops run by a world-class team of writers including WN Herbert, Jackie
Kay and Sean O’Brien. As places fill up very quickly and people often return
year after year, anyone who is interested is urged to enrol as soon as
possible.
Poetry &
Translation runs from 29th September to 3rd November with tutors Linda France, Desmond
Graham and Francis
Jones. Knowledge of a second language is not necessary for this course,
which explores the insight into creativity given by the act of translation.
Poetry
Masterclass,
which runs from 29th September to 3rd November is one
of a pair of advanced workshops taught in independent six week courses with tutors including Colette Bryce, Linda France, WN
Herbert and Sean O’Brien.
Memoir Writing runs from 29th September to 3rd November with tutor Alison
Gangel, whose own memoir The Sun Hasn’t Fallen from the Sky (Bloomsbury, 2011) was
an instant success. The emphasis of the course will be on reading and
thinking critically about memoirs and the limits and possibilities of the
memoir as a form.
Fiction
Masterclass: Planning a Novel runs from 29th September to 3rd November with Kachi
Ozumba as tutor. Kachi’s first novel, The Shadow of a Smile was
shortlisted for the Royal
Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Commonwealth
Writers’ Prize, and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
The course aims to extend the skills of prose writers already engaged
in writing a novel.
Writing & Health: Ideas &
Practice runs
from 10th November to 15th December with Cynthia Fuller
and looks at how creative writing can be used to work with groups in health
care and other community settings.
Poetry: The Spirit of Place, which runs from 10th November to 15th December with Linda France, is a practical
course, exploring how the sense of place informs and influences poetry.
Writing for
Radio (1),
which runs from 10th November to 15th December, is led
by Margaret Wilkinson, whose most recent piece for radio Can You Hear Me was
the Play of the Week Podcast in June this year. This is a course for those
who want to learn all about writing for radio. Please note that a new course, Writing
for Radio (2), which is aimed at those with some radio or scriptwriting
experience, will be running early next year.
Poetry: On Form runs from 10th November to 15th December, with Colette Bryce as tutor. Aimed at
those who write and re-write poems this course takes a fresh look at how some
contemporary poets are revitalising traditional forms.
All
courses run from 5pm–7pm and cost £80 full price/£60 concessions
(60+/benefits/full-time student).
To book a place, or for further
information, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
Fire Balloons: the Incendiary Letters of Lowell
and Bishop is the
title for the Elizabeth
Bishop Centenary Lecture to be given by Paul Muldoon on Thursday 29th September at 6.30pm in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle
University.
Since Elizabeth Bishop’s death in 1979 her
reputation has grown steadily and now eclipses that of most of her
contemporaries. She is the poet most often cited by poets in the UK as a
major influence. This event is a tremendous opportunity not only to hear
Muldoon talk about Bishop but also to see a film focusing on Bishop’s influence
on contemporary poets and the effect her childhood in Canada had on her
writing, which was made by Linda Anderson after her recent visit to Great
Village, Nova Scotia, where Bishop lived.
Tickets (£6/£4) are available online from the webstore.
Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
First Thursday readings recommence on 6th October at 1pm with Christy
Ducker, award-winning poet and Newcastle University Creative Writing PhD
student. Her pamphlet, Armour, was a winner in the 2010 Poetry
Business Book & Pamphlet Competition and has just been published. The venue is the
Robert Boyle Lecture Theatre in the Armstrong Building.
Ali Smith will be discussing her latest novel, There But For The (Hamish Hamilton, 2011) with Jackie Kay – and the audience – on Thursday 13th October at 7pm in Culture Lab, Newcastle University. Ali Smith has been winning prizes since she first began to publish in 1995. One reviewer wrote ‘Ali Smith brims with stories...Everything has a tale attached which seems right for an author who believes with all her heart that stories change lives.’ Another reviewer writes of There But For The that it is ‘playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting.’
Tickets (£6/£4) are available online from the webstore.
Alternatively, call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
Congratulations to Helen Limon, Creative Writing PhD
student, on receiving the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award 2011 for her novel Om Shanti, Babe.
NCLA is delighted that so many writers
associated with the Centre have received Northern
Writers Awards this year, including Colette Bryce (Time to Write
Award), Shelley Day Sclater (Andrea Badenoch Award for Fiction), Daniel
Hardisty (Northern Promise Award), Wendy Heath (Northern Promise Award), Anna
Woodford (Time to Write Award) and Alison Gangel who won an award for prose.
Creative Writing PhD student Stevie Ronnie has been
commissioned by Durham City Arts to produce Brass Book, a series of
digital books which will link Durham Literature Festival with Brass: Durham
International Music Festival. The books, which combine traditional bookmaking
techniques with cutting edge technology, will be produced in collaboration
with communities from County Durham. The project launches with an exhibition
of artworks by Stevie which explore the relationship between technology and
the book. The exhibition will be held at Durham Town Hall and runs for a
month from the 1st October.
NCLA is always interested to hear news of its
friends’ and associates’ successes and experiences. If you have any news
you’d like to share please email us at ncenla@ncl.ac.uk