What's New?
Aberystwyth - Texas Doctoral Exchange
The Department of English and Creative Writing is now inviting applications for the Aberystwyth-Texas doctoral exchange. The exchange is an exciting opportunity for the department’s PhD students to experience a different learning environment by spending a semester in the Department of English, Texas A&M University.
Students will be supervised by a member of the English Department with compatible research interests, have the opportunity to deliver a paper on their own research and to contribute to some undergraduate seminars. The Department at Texas teaches creative writing and literary studies. (See Texas Exchange Information and Texas Exchange Application Form - competition open only to existing Phd students).
Opened in 1876 as Texas' first public institution of higher learning, Texas A&M University is a research-intensive flagship university with 38,000-plus undergraduates and more than 9,000 graduate students studying in over 250 degree programs in 10 colleges. The Department of English at Texas A & M University has played an important role on campus since the University's founding in 1876, when "Languages and Literature" was designated as one of the original four courses of study. Now in its second century, the Department has 90 faculty, 100 graduate students, and 700 undergraduate majors, and is built upon a long tradition of study in literature and language, writing and reading, culture and interpretation. The Department of English maintains a tradition of excellence in research and teaching at all levels.
Undergrad Shortlisted for Young Writers' Award
Congratulations! 2nd Year undergraduate student, Beth Garden, has been shortlisted for the WICKED Young Writers’ Award for her poem The Moon. The WICKED Young Writers' Award recognises excellence in writing, encourages creativity and helps develop writing talent in young people. The main judges for the 2011 award are Michael McCabe, Executive Producer of WICKED, Michael Morpurgo, former Children's Laureate and bestselling author and William Fiennes, author and founder of First Story. (Posted 21 December)
London Festival Fringe Award for Tiffany Atkinson
We are delighted to announce that the LONDON FESTIVAL FRINGE has nominated Tiffany Atkinson for the London Poetry Award 2012. The London Awards for Art and Performance are the country's most expansive awards and recognise artists and performers across many art-forms. Nominated artists are considered to have made an outstanding contribution to their art. The shortlist will be announced in late Spring 2012 and awards will take place in central London in the summer of 2012. Well done, Tiffany! (Posted 21 December)
Leverhulme Award: “Women’s Poetry 1400-1800 in English, Irish, Scots, Scots Gaelic and Welsh”
Dr Sarah Prescott, as Principal Applicant, will be directing this fascinating new project for which an important Leverhulme Project Grant has been awarded. Over the next three years she will be working with fellow scholars at the University of Edinburgh, National University of Ireland, Galway and the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth.
Commenting on the project Dr Prescott said: "The proposed research will provide a major new literary history of women's poetry in Ireland, Scotland and Wales from 1400 to 1800 in Welsh, Gaelic, Scots, Scots Gaelic and English through a fully edited anthology with translations and a critical study jointly written by the specialists engaged on the project. The last twenty years has seen an explosion of interest in pre-1800 British women's writing. However, there is currently still no comparative study of women’s poetry across linguistic and national boundaries in this period. This is due primarily to thedifficulty of finding a single scholar with the appropriate linguistic expertise and interest across the Anglophone, Irish, Scottish and Welsh contexts of women’s writing, but also a result of the disciplinary division between the study of Celtic and Anglophone cultures. The primary aim of this project is thus to cross these linguistic and disciplinary boundaries to understand for the first time the ways in which women’s poetic production operated and survived in multiple geographical locations and comparative linguistic and cultural contexts. By engaging in the archival recovery of women poets, the over-arching aim of the project is to provide a revisionary account of women’s literary activity which seeks to overturn the critical commonplaces of early women’s writing." (Posted 13 December 2011)
MA Student Wins Faculty Prize
We are delighted to learn that Lowri Emlyn, student of Creative Writing has just been awarded the University Faculty of Arts Prize. (Posted 13 December 2011)
Critical Acclaim for New Poetry Collection
Congratulations to Tiffany Atkinson. Tiffany's second collection Catulla et al was given the lead poetry review in Saturday's Guardian, 20 November. Beginning by describing the book as a 'smart, sardonic and vulnerable updating of Catullus', Patrick McGuinness goes on to say that 'Atkinson's versions are in the finest tradition of creative adaptation: keeping the originals as ballast, but unafraid to sail off on their own tangents.' Atkinson's first collection, Kink and Particle, appeared in 2006; this, her second, has her familiar quickness of mind, her spiky, often self-lacerating wit, and her snappy, vibrant diction. Catulla's is a world of decadent excess and morning-after desolation, of hangovers of the moral as well as the physical kind; of reality TV, suburban infidelity, jealousy and besottedness. – Patrick McGuinness. The collection is published by Bloodaxe Books. (Posted 21 November)
BOOK LAUNCH - Thursday
Honno Press invites you to the launch of Mysterious Death of Miss Austen – a new book by popular local writer, Lindsay Ashford: Thursday 24 November, 18.00 in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre Bookshop. For more about Lindsay's book:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/14/jane-austen-arsenic-poisoning
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/250025/20111115/did-jane-austen-die-arsenic-poisoning-lindsay.htm
(Posted 22 November)
Chawton House Lecture
Dr Sarah Prescott will be presenting a lecture at the Chawton House Library, Alton, Hampshire - "Home of Early English Women's Writing" - on 6 December. Sarah will explore a range of Anglophone Welsh women writers from the eighteenth century in this unique lecture - the last in the Library's series for 2011. See poster 18th C Welsh Women's Literary History (Posted 22 November)
NEW DEGREE SCHEME: BA English and World Literatures
The Department of English and Creative Writing is very pleased to announce the launch of a new degree scheme: BA English and World Literatures, to start next academic year 2012-13. Students taking this dynamic new degree will complete their studies with a truly global perspective on literary studies in English. The English and World Literatures (EWL) degree allows students to explore the work of leading international writers from Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Caribbean and North America, as well the most urgent literary voices from the British and Irish archipelago. EWL offers an exciting combination of 'traditional' English degree and a course of study that reveals the diversity of English-language writing emerging from global locations of culture. (Posted 18 October)
Poetry Competition
Julia Roberts’ poem, ‘A boxed set of seagulls’, was a runner up in the 2011 Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition judged by poet and editor, Professor Jo Shapcott of Royal Holloway College. The poem is published in the October edition of Mslexia, the magazine for women who write.
Julia, who is now a PhD student in the department, worked on the poem as part of her MA here at Aber. Jo Shapcott said, 'Julia Roberts’ poem, ‘A boxed set of seagulls’, was only two small stanzas of eight lines each, capturing the resonance of the holiday gift and the difficulty of choosing the right one. Like Crusoe’s knife in the Bishop poem, they ‘reek of meaning’, but can’t touch the real experience sketched beautifully in the last four lines.' (Posted 12 October)
Another success for PhD Student
Creative writing PhD student Tyler Keevil has been shortlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize 2011 for his debut novel Fireball (Parthian Books). This award, open to novels which were eligible for the Booker Prize but not shortlisted for it, is voted for by visitors to the Guardian website. The six shortlisted books will be reviewed on the site and readers will debate their merits before a final vote in October. It’s the second success for Fireball recently, following its longlisting for the Wales Book of the Year Award (see below). Tyler is currently working on a second novel as part of his PhD. (Posted 19 August)
An Invitation to Open the Vaults
On Tuesday 23rd August, a one-day symposium - 'Opening the Vaults' - is being held at Gloddaith Hall, (St. David's College), Llandudno; one of the ancestral residences of the Mostyn family. The event will revolve around current studies of Welsh families and their archives c.1500-1850. The prospective presenters range from archivists and art-dealers to doctoral candidates and university lecturers whereas presentation topics will focus on a wide variety of themes including portraiture, creative writing, conspicuous consumption, Welsh-language poetry, slavery, Puritanism and archival issues. We would welcome a large audience drawn from the IMEMS community. If you are interested in attending please see the attached advertising poster and contact the organisers for further details. For travel directions please see: http://www.stdavidscollege.co.uk/home.php?//contact_us/directions . See poster for Opening the Vaults . (Posted 6 July)
Scottish Retreat
Lecturet and Poet, Tiffany Atkinson has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. Hawthornden Castle is an international retreat for writers and stands on a secluded crag overlooking the valley of the river North Esk, just to the south of Edinburgh. The view is impressive, as is the silence surrounding the glen. Just what's needed to refresh the creative spirit at the end of the academic calendar. (Posted 24 June)
Chawton House Library Fellowship
The Centre for Women's Writing and Literary Culture is delighted to announce that doctoral student Mary Chadwick has been granted a Chawton House Library Fellowship for Autumn/Winter 2011.
Chawton House Library holds a collection of books focusing on women's writing in English from 1600 to 1830. Set in the home of Jane Austen’s brother, the library offers a unique opportunity to study texts in a peaceful, beautiful and supportive setting.
Mary will spend November and December 2011 working with the library's collection of late eighteenth-century novels. She will focus on those written by women and set in Wales, as part of her AHRC-funded PhD research into the literary pursuits and representations of the Welsh gentry. During her time at Chawton, Mary will present a paper based on her research and may contribute a short piece of work to the library’s journal The Female Spectator. (Posted 22 June)
Fellowship at Wolfson College
Congratulations to Professor Sarah Hutton who will be taking up a visiting fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge for the Michaelmas Term commencing this September. (Posted 22 June)
Leverhulme Research Fellowship
Senior Lecturer, Dr Martin Padget has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to begin work on a critical biography of Paul Strand, one of the leading photographers and creative intellectuals of the 20th Century.(Posted 11 May)Launch of new Research Centre
The official launch of the Centre for Women’s Writing and Literary Culture (CWWLC) will take place at The Drwm, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth on 31 May 2011
After introductions the Centre’s Inaugural Annual Lecture, in collaboration with the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), will be presented Professor Margaret J. M. Ezell, Distinguished Professor and Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts, Texas A& M University. The title of lecture is Seventeenth-Century Female Author Portraits, Or, The Company She Keeps.
The afternoon programme includes: poetry readings from Gwyneth Lewis and Alicia Stubbersfield, a lecture entitled 50 rooms of their own: Chawton House Library and Jane Austen in 2011 by Dr Gillian Dow of the Chawton House Library, University of Southampton and a presentation of plans for future collaboration between the library and the CWWLC by and Stephen Lawrence (Chief Executive, Chawton House Library) and Dr Rebecca Davies (Aberystwyth University). Honno Press will generously donate a collection of books to the Centre to mark the launch. Full details in CWWLC Launch Programme (Posted 4 May)
Nomination
Congratulations to Tyler Keevil, postgraduate student of Creative Writing, who has been longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year for his first novel, Fireball. Tyler was delighted at the nomination: "I’m very grateful that readers have taken to ‘Fireball.’ It’s a pretty weird book, really – about a couple of misfits from suburban Vancouver – and I had no idea how people would react when it came out. But the response has been super positive. I’ve had a lot of support along the way – from my editor Lucy Llewellyn, of course, and also my teachers at Aberystwyth, most notably Matthew Francis (who’s currently supervising my PhD). I don’t think any of us expected this fortuitous turn of events, and it’s both exciting and humbling to have made the longlist for Wales Book of the Year." (Posted 20 April)
Contact Details
Department of English & Creative WritingAberystwyth University
Hugh Owen Building
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DY
Tel: (01970) 622534 Fax: (01970) 622530 Email: english@aber.ac.uk