The opening chapter from Lynne Bryan’s memoir Iron Man, published by Salt in November 2021 and available from the Salt website. There is a story I’ve carried with me since childhood. It isn’t a fairy tale and it isn’t enchanted. It’s more personal than that, and more terrifying. It has the usual story elements: […]
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2021 Scriptwriting MA anthology: foreword
Tilly Lunken’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Scriptwriting MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. Reflection. It’s what writing does. It looks backwards, forwards, inside and out. It distorts or reveals truth, but it contains in essence part of us. As a writer and a reader. Who we are informs how we receive it, […]
2021 Non-Fiction MA anthology: foreword
Elisa Segrave’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Non-fiction MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. In early 1970, a friend and I travelled round America on Greyhound Buses, collecting underground newspapers. Many US towns had at least one. It was an exciting and turbulent time. In Chicago, before visiting the newspaper office of The […]
2021 Crime Fiction MA anthology: foreword
Elly Griffiths’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Crime Fiction MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. ‘Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach?’ asks Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. ‘I call it the detective fever.’ TS Eliot called The Moonstone, published in 1868, ‘the first, the […]
2021 Translation MA anthology: foreword
Olivia Hellewell’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Literary Translation MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. ‘Making something, and making something different.’ Change is often expressed as something that happens to us; an ambiguous force to be observed. ‘Everything is changing,’ we say, suggesting an external process that we witness, passively, and notice […]
2021 Poetry MA anthology: foreword
Bhanu Kapil’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Poetry MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. The Future of Poetry In the mid to late spring of 2021, I had the pleasure of Zooming with many poets at the University of East Anglia. We spoke about the body, which is to say, the relationship […]
2021 Prose Fiction MA anthology: foreword
Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s foreword to UEA’s 2021 Prose Fiction MA anthology, published by Egg Box and available HERE. Suzanne Ushie was supposed to be my classmate, but she preceded me to Norwich by a year. Though we both lived in Nigeria, we had never met in person, only becoming acquainted when we learnt that we were […]
Somebody Loves You
An excerpt from Mona Arshi’s debut novel Somebody Loves You, published by And Other Stories in November 2021. EGGS A man is offering her a bowl. She peers inside and there is an egg nestled in light peat close to the surface. It is a small blue egg – perfect and complete. She gently […]
Creative Writing and the Democratisation of Literary Access
Celebrating 50 years of Creative Writing at UEA, in partnership with the European Association of Creative Writing (EACWP) This online conference in May 2021 considered the future of Creative Writing in universities and the importance of literature and drama in helping us navigate challenging moments in history. In this keynote lecture, the novelist and Professor […]
Four poems
Four poems from Tenderloin, the debut pamphlet of poetry by Al Anderson, published by Blush in November 2021 and available in UK bookshops or direct from the publisher here. Common tendencies despair so cute I resigned myself to writing YA fiction would that my face were passed thru a thicc pane of glass […]