Aber gets creative in Arizona!

On 1st March six members of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University set out for Phoenix, Arizona as part of a significant collaboration with the Virginia G Piper Centre for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU). Four of the team were creative writing PhD students (Kath Stansfield, Dave Towsey, Maria Apichella and Kate Wright) who had been selected to attend the prestigious Desert Nights, Rising Stars writers' conference as delegates; the other two were Professor Jem Poster and Dr Tiffany Atkinson, who had been invited to attend as visiting faculty for the conference. ASU had generously covered most of the expenses of both students and staff.

The Conference consisted of a wide-range of events including readings, panel presentations, question and answer sessions and workshops; its faculty consisted of significant poets, novelists and writers of creative non-fiction, mainly from within the United States. The Conference was a huge success, both in general terms and from the point of view of Aberystwyth's involvement. One of the PhD students wrote on her return: I thoroughly enjoyed it and feel refreshed in many different ways. I've been to several conferences before but this was the only one where I felt I was meant to be there. It is hoped that this valuable connection with ASU will be developed further in future years.

 

(Left to right:  Dave Towsey, Kath Stansfield and Kate Wright)