Katherine Stansfield

Published Author

Education

Katherine graduated from Aberystwyth University in 2005 with a first class BA Hons. in English and Creative Writing. She stayed in the Department to study for her MA in Creative Writing, achieving a Distinction in 2006. She secured full funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to continue her postgraduate studies, and in 2010 she completed her PhD Creative Writing at Aberystwyth. The novel she wrote for her PhD, The Visitor, was published by Parthian in 2013. It went on to win the 2014 Holyer an Gof Prize for Fiction. In 2014 Seren published her debut collection of poems, Playing House, which includes poems written whilst Katherine was a student in the Department.

Career Path

“It has been my dream, for as long as I can remember, to see my writing in print, but I’ve learnt that being a writer requires much more than just writing novels and poems. Publishers need their authors to help with promotion and sales, and this requires very different skills to those needed to write a compelling story. I use social media to spread the word about my publications, manage my own website to provide an accurate and dynamic hub of information about my career, and I’m responsible for my profile on sites such as Amazon and Good Reads. Festival appearances and author events in bookshops and libraries are essential in marketing my books; these require public speaking, dealing with questions in pressurised environments, and having good people skills. I’ve worked hard to build networks in the Welsh literary community and that all started whilst I was a student at Aberystwyth. I got some work experience at the literary magazine New Welsh Review through being a student in the Department. This work was invaluable in learning about submitting work to magazines, publishing deadlines, grant funding and marketing, all of which are essential skills when working as an author. It also led to my interest in the literary culture that surrounds me as a writer, and I went on to join the English-language grants panel of the Welsh Books Council. I met a literary agent through my MA who was a great inspiration for my debut novel, and I gained teaching experience through my PhD. The latter gave me the tools I need to run writing workshops which I now undertake in a freelance capacity to supplement my writing income.

After a year travelling in Europe and North America, I'm back in Wales. My new novel Falling Creatures will be published by Allison & Busby in 2017, with a sequel to follow in 2018. I'm finishing work on my second collection of poetry, for which I received a writer's bursary from Literature Wales, and alongside this I'll be teaching a new Writing Crime Fiction course for Cardiff University's School of Continuing and Professional Development. I also undertake freelance marking work for Cambridge University, and manuscript assessments for Literature Wales and The Writer's Workshop.”

Why English and Creative Writing?

“Before I came to Aberystwyth to study I’d written some poems but I hadn’t shown them to anyone, and I lacked technical knowledge as well as having a narrow range of reading. I was keen to develop as a writer but I had no idea how to start. The Department of English and Creative Writing gave me the skills I needed to explore and experiment, as a reader and as a writer. Seminars pushed me to think about literature in a transformative way, considering its relationship with history, politics, economics, gender relations, the environment. Writing workshops expanded my understanding of what writing could do, and what I could do with my writing. The feedback and support I received was second to none. The Department's staff are committed to helping their students be the best writers that they can be, and to teaching them about the professional sphere they’re going to enter. Aberystwyth’s emphasis on self-reflection as part of writing equipped me to talk about my work online, at events, and as part of funding applications. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my degrees from Aberystwyth.”