Guest Lectures and Masterclasses Spring 2025

As usual, there are lots of exciting events happening in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester this Spring. Here (below) are some of them. All are free and open to everyone, though please do register in advance for the workshops with jt265@le.ac.uk because places can be limited.  

Centre for New Writing events, Spring 2025

On Wednesday 26 February, 4-6pm in Attenborough room 1.11, David Barker will give a guest talk on The Publishing Industry in the UK. The talk is open to all. Dr David Barker is Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby and Programme Leader for MA Publishing. Previously, he worked in the publishing industry for twenty years, starting out as an editorial assistant in London in the 1990s before moving to New York to work for Continuum there, becoming Editorial Director. When Continuum was acquired by Bloomsbury in 2011, David became Publishing Director for the Humanities and Social Sciences and moved back to work in Bloomsbury's London office. He has been at the University of Derby since 2017. In this talk, David will give an overview of the UK publishing industry, discussing different roles, departments and market sectors. In particular, he will offer insight and advice on finding an entry-level role within this competitive industry, and will be happy to answer any questions about working in publishing or getting published yourself. 

On Wednesday 12 March, 1-2pm, Melanie Abrahams will be giving a guest talk on "The Literature Ecology and What It Can Do for Me: Curating and Producing Work (and Life)." This session will explore the literature ecology and the ways that you can design and produce the career you'd most like to have - or at the very least - explore more deeply the options you have before you. It will look at the role literature can play in helping you to curate and produce your work and life and will include some perspectives and tips on making the most of your interests and resources.  The session will include a Q & A session to provide an opportunity to bring and ask questions and dig a little deeper into the themes being explored. This talk is suitable for anyone who works in literature or is planning to whether you are a student, publisher, writer or interested in developing a role that has not yet been created. Whether you know what you wish to do at this stage, the session will encourage you to think about your skills and abilities and how you can apply them to your chosen career. Melanie Abrahams FRSA Hon FRSL is a curator, visiting lecturer and creative producer who has channelled a love of words and books into initiatives. She consistently pushes for greater diversity in the arts, with a focus on narratives of race, class, background and mixed race identities. Melanie is Creative Director of organisation Renaissance One and spoken word project Tilt, both of which have championed literature/spoken word artforms through events, mentoring and learning for over twenty years. She has curated festivals and programmes including Caribbean Fest (marking Caribbean creativity), Modern Love a spoken word project exploring contemporary love and relationships which toured the UK and Europe, and an events series on "otherness" for the Bronte Parsonage and Museum (This, That & The Other).  

On Friday 14 March, 1-3pm in SBB room 2.05, author Jane McVeigh will give a writing masterclass: "Turning Life into Story: An Introduction to Writing Biography." As Claire Tomalin writes, "I think the impulse behind writing biography is the same as the impulse that lies behind most writing. It’s the ability to see stories, to tell stories" (Claire Tomalin in Lives for Sale). Places are limited, so please sign up in advance by emailing hdw5@le.ac.uk. 

On Wednesday 19 March, 2-4pm in Attenborough room 1.09, journalist Jess Bacon will give a talk on freelancing: "How to Get into Journalism." Jess is a freelance film, culture and lifestyle journalist and former editor with over six years professional industry experience. She’s written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Elle, British GQ, Dazed, Cosmo, Stylist, Digital Spy and Radio Times. She is currently working on her first novel. This workshop is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is open to all. Places are limited, so please sign up in advance by emailing jt265@le.ac.uk. 

The University of Leicester's annual Literary Leicester Festival runs from Wednesday 19 March to Saturday 22 March 2025. All the events are free, and you can see the programme here. As part of the festival, we will be running our annual Creative Writing Student Showcase. This will take place 4.30pm-5.45pm on Wednesday 19 March. You can see details here. If you are a current or ex-student of Creative Writing at Leicester, and would like to perform at the event, please email jt265@le.ac.uk in advance. 

On Monday 24 March 10am-12 in Attenborough room 2.10, author Dan Powell will give a writing masterclass: "Finding the Story Moment: Prose Fiction and (Pre-)Closure." The workshop is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is open to all. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265@le.ac.uk in advance, because places are limited. 

And finally, on Tuesday 13 May, 11am-1230pm (room TBC), Prof. Kit de Waal will be giving a writing masterclass: "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly - Building Believable Characters." This is part of the MA Creative Writing's annual Dissertation day, but the morning workshop is open to all. If you'd like to register for the event in advance, please email jt265@le.ac.uk. 

Janet Burroway, "The Dancer from the Dance"

Janet Burroway is the author of plays, poetry, children’s books, and nine novels including The Buzzards, Raw Silk, Opening Nights, Cutting Stone (all Notable Books of The New York Times Book Review), Bridge of Sand and the soon-to-be-published Simone in Pieces. Her Writing Fiction, now in a tenth edition from the University of Chicago Press, is the most widely used Creative Writing text in America; and Imaginative Writing, recently published in its fifth edition, covers poetry, prose and drama. She is author of a collection of essays, Embalming Mom, poems Material Good, and the memoir Losing Tim. Winner of the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council, she is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University.

 

About The Dancer from the Dance, by Janet Burroway
A striking, enigmatic American girl arrives in Paris and disrupts the lives of a medical student at the Cité, a famous French mime, his protégé, the protégé’s Spanish wife, an ancient, suicidal British inventor of perpetual motion machines, a benevolent old woman, the long-suffering wife of the narrator, and the “sixty-year-old smiling public man” who tells the story. According to the narrator Stanford Powers, an acquisitions official of the UNICEF office in Paris, Prytania is one of those “fey, unfathomable creatures who float a few inches above the ground.” She seems at once helpless and quick. But which of these people are trying to help her? Which of them have fallen in love with her? Which of them may be manipulating her? And which of them are the fools?

The Dancer from the Dance is published by Michael Walmer Publishers. You can read more on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample passage from the novel. 

From The Dancer from the Dance

“The trouble is,“ he said, “That we’re stuck with the body. I hadn’t looked that far back for it before.”

“Yves would love that,“ Laura observed. “Cognac, or a sweet one?”

Bent over, he raised his head expectantly to us. Laura was crossing to the dolly of liqueurs. Elena yawned luxuriously. I hadn’t understood him. With an impatient gesture, Jean-Claude rolled forward onto his head and one forearm, hung his legs asymmetrically in the air, and wound his free arm in a crooked oval.

“Now,” he demanded very distinctly, as if his inversion might make him inaudible, “if I were to stay like this for thirty-six hours, do you think you might be able to think of me as something else than a person wrong end up?”

As he spoke his tie, a bright, deep red affair in silk shantung, slunk down his shirt front and draped itself languidly over his face. Elena sat up for the first time since dessert.

“Jean-Claude,” she said, “your taste is beyond salvation.”

Unable, anyway, to get the tie out of his eyes without altering the pattern of his arm, Jean-Claude put his legs down and sat up on the floor.

“It’s the principle of motion sculpture,” he said listlessly. “I think it is. I’ll have to ask a motion sculptor. You’re freed to see the pattern of a thing precisely because it’s doing something that it isn’t meant to do.”

“Did you buy that?” Elena insisted.

Jean-Claude tucked the tie possessively back into his jacket and gave his wife a look mock-wounded and mock-resentful. ‘I did,” he said. “But it was a sentimental purchase.”

“All right, she said, “you may wear it as much as you like at home, but I won’t be seen in company with it.” She smiled oddly. Jean-Claude took her foot and traced a ring around her ankle with his finger.

Maggie Brookes-Butt, "Wish: New and Selected Poems"

Maggie Brookes-Butt has been writing all her life, starting work as a journalist and a BBC TV documentary producer. Her books include six poetry collections as Maggie Butt and two historical novels as Maggie Brookes, published by Penguin Random House. She taught creative writing at Middlesex University for 30 years, and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea.

About Wish: New and Selected Poems
Wish contains 50 poems from Maggie's six previous collections, about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love. They are gathered here alongside 21 bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world. The new poems are addressed to her young grandchildren, to be read by them when they grow up.

You can read more about Wish on the author's website here. Below, you can read two poems from the poetry collection. 

From Wish, by Maggie Brookes-Butt

Murmur

My heart is whispering – this faint back-wash
is slush and suck of waves over shingle,
tumbling the stones which will lie underwater
when storms rage far above their flooded world.
 
My heart is whispering – a breeze turns
over leaves, its shivery message passes
from branch to branch at the far-off crackle
of forest flames and thudding feet of animals.
 
But whispers lullaby your sleeping form,
your peaceful unknowing, sharing secrets
of here-and-gone, here-and-gone. Listen
to its echo: love ... love ... love ...
 

Eyes
 
Mine have seen first breaths and lasts,
the beginning and end of everything,
 
green shoots and heaps of rotting leaves.
They've seen horses pulling coal drays,
 
milk bottle tops pecked by blue-tits,
peace camps, walls torn down, glass
 
ceilings cracking, gay weddings,
but children slippered in class, life vests
 
washed up beside migrant boats, turtles
choked by plastic bags, smoking ruins.
 
Mine are hooded now, the teal and amber
marbled irises surrounded by crinkled deltas
 
of skin, but still see clearly thanks to small
acrylic miracles and astonishing dexterity.
 
Yours are wide and bright, the whites whiter
than paper, almost blue, the irises two shades
 
of grey, dove grey circled by wet-slate grey.
They can spot the smallest dot of crumb,
 
bending to retrieve it, or point to the woods
where a squirrel is camouflaged against a trunk.
 
I can see what's coming, my vision unclouded
by the twin cataracts of helplessness and dismay.
 
Polar bears claim abandoned villages. Tanks roll
in again. Together we watch the leaves fall.

 

Neil Campbell, "Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents"

 

Neil Campbell's new collection of short stories Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents is out now. From Manchester, England, he has appeared four times in the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories. He has published three novels, six collections of short stories, two poetry chapbooks and a poetry collection, as well as appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies. His website is here. 

About Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents, by Neil Campbell

Campbell gives voice to the extraordinary (never ordinary) men and women of Manchester. He goes beyond the King's English and formulaic approaches to short stories to capture, in print, how people really talk. Think James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, but Mancunian. Funny and heartfelt, this book is a romp to whizz through with pleasure. Forget mad for it Madchester, this is the Manchester of now, where Hacienda clichés turn into corporate nightmares and the only art is in marketing.

Read more about Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an except from the collection. 

From Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents

Job and Knock 

Chris does the nightshift because no other fucker wants to do it. So he deserves the better money and the fact that they can usually get the job done early doors. It’s what they call job and knock.

Most of the lads are on the iPlayer all night, catching up on the football or Line of Duty or whatever. But they’ve been getting away with it so long they’re even getting bored of the iPlayer.

Why don’t we just go to the boozer for a bit, says Chris, to Phil, the lad he’s on the job with. Phil can’t come up with a reason not to.

Nobody ever mentions management. They’re a joke anyway. Most of these nightshift lads said could have got management jobs if they’d wanted but they couldn’t be arsed with the hassle of going to meetings and all that, they just wanted to crack on with the job.

They started the nightshift at six bells and by eight they went to the boozer. It was only about a thirty-yard walk from the exchange. Months they’d been dragging this job out, on and off.

They went in the pub and it wasn’t like they remembered. Instead of cosy corners and comfy seats it was full of tables and families sat there having meals. Screaming kids all over the place. Both Chris and Phil had enough of that at home. Part of the reason Chris did the nightshift was that he got more kip on the hammock in the back of the van than he did in his own bed.

The pints cost a fortune and of course you had to go outside with your fags as well. Just wasn’t the same. It was like they were deliberately trying to get rid of pubs for the drinker. They were just restaurants that sold the occasional lager now. This boozer didn’t even do Guinness anymore. They always used to have great nights on the Guinness in there.

On the way back to the exchange they stopped at an off licence and picked up a four pack of Foster’s and some fags. Back in the exchange Chris turned on all the lights and they flicked on one after another. They sat there at the tables and then Phil asked if Chris knew the way onto the roof.

Yeah, think so.

Better than being stuck in here. Let’s have a wander up there.

They trailed up the stairs carrying the beer with them and went out through the fire escape and onto the roof. The bright lights of the big city stretched out before them.

Phil went back down and brought a couple of chairs back up and they sat there on the roof smoking and drinking.

This is fucking quality, said Phil.

 

Nice and cool on here as well. Boiling in that exchange.

Better get these beers down us.

Save a couple until tomorrow mate. No sense driving home pissed. One’s enough anyway. It’s like the fucking Shawshank Redemption up here.

Ailsa Cox, "Precipitation," with images by Patricia Farrell

Ailsa Cox is Professor Emerita in Short Fiction at Edge Hill University. Her stories have been widely published and collected as The Real Louise (Headland Press). Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge) and Alice Munro (Liverpool University Press, Writers and Their Work). She is also the editor of the journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (Intellect Press). Born in Walsall, she is now based in West Yorkshire.  

Patricia Farrell is a poet and visual artist. She has collaborated with other writers, artists and musicians on a range of projects and publications. Her work is published in magazines and collections, as well as individual pamphlets: most recently, High Cut (Leafe Press). 

About Precipitation, by Ailsa Cox
Precipitation is a collection of three stories by Ailsa Cox, two of which are published for the first time. It also features images created by the artist Patricia Farrell in response to the stories. The book is the fifth in a series of collaborations between writers and artists - the first, Interpolated Stories by David Rose and Leah Leaf, was published by Confingo Publishing in 2022.

Set mostly in North-West England, with excursions to Wales, Paris and the Arabian desert, these stories map the inner and outer world of their characters, excavating layers of time and memory. Two of the stories take place on the fictional street of Bethel Brow, where a grandmother nurses a long-held grievance, while two young incomers live the dream of a house in the country. In the third, the thwarted ambitions of a disappointed novelist take him on an imaginary journey. Sharply observed and often darkly comic, they hinge upon those small moments that can change your life for ever – a missed train, a turn in the weather, or a puzzling encounter with a neighbour.

You can read more about Precipitation on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an extract from the opening of one of the stories. 

From Precipitation

Heavy Showers and Thunder

He stops for a minute to take in the view – the hills unfolding, wave upon wave, the village hidden deep inside the valley – the faint susurration of traffic only accentuating the stillness and the silence here at the edge of the moor. Above the ruined house where the farmer feeds his cattle, the clouds are rolling in like enormous grey whales, but they’ve been that way all day, with no more than the briefest scattering of rain. Pale from lack of water, the paths are hard as concrete; the stony tracks that turn into streams in wintertime have run dry. He swigs a mouthful of water, cycles on. This is where he comes to get away.

Soon the rain’s falling sheer as a curtain – the noise Barbara thought might be a plane was definitely thunder. The view from the window is quickly erased, the dingy outlines of buildings dissolving into the landscape. The culvert will be rushing with the force of cannon fire, rain boiling up against the manholes on the towpath, and the waterfall surging like dark beer. Tonight’s a night to stay indoors, listening for the warlike wail of flood sirens. George and Barbara are safe up on the hillside. They don’t mind the rain; they’re glad of it. The ground could do with a soaking. All the same, Barbara wishes George would pay some mind to the flashing on the chimney.

‘Luke’s rung,’ George says, coming back from closing up the greenhouse.

‘Luke?’ Barbara’s salvaging some bendy carrots, the tips disintegrating when she tries to peel them. 

‘He’s been on a bike ride.’

‘Oh, that Luke.’

‘The line’s flooded. He can’t get home.’

‘So he wants to stay the night?’

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘I’ve no choice, have I?’

Julian Stannard, "New and Selected Poems"

Julian Stannard has written nine volumes of poetry including Sottoripa: Genoese Poems (a bilingual publication, Canneto, 2018). His last single collection was Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of my Brother (Salt, 2023). In January 2025  Salt brought out New and Selected Poems. He has been awarded the International Troubadour Prize for Poetry and nominated various times for the Forward and the Pushcart. In 2024 he was awarded the Lerici Shelley Prize for his contribution to  Ligurian/Italian culture. He has written critical studies of Fleur Adcock, Basil Bunting, Donald Davie, Charles Tomlinson and Leonard Cohen. He co-edited The Palm Beach Effect: Reflections on Michael Hofmann (CB editions, 2013). In 2024 Sagging Meniscus Press (USA) brought out a campus novel called The University of Bliss.

About New and Selected Poems, by Julian Stannard
This new book brings together some twenty-five years of writing. Julian Stannard moved  to Italy in 1984 and worked  at the University of Genoa  for many years. He started teaching at the University of Winchester in 2005. Many of these poems draw on his experiences of living in Genoa / Liguria, though he also writes extensively about contemporary Britain and further afield. New poems represented here have appeared in The Spectator, The Dark Horse, Bad Lilies, Wild Court and AN Editions.

You can read more about New and Selected Poems on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection.  

From New and Selected Poems

The Pool

The chief leaf man rises early.
A breeze in the banyan tree.
The water laps.
Skink lizard on the prowl.
 
Perfection. Blue. Perfection.
No leaves on the water.
Miles Davis - his ghost -
becoming the banyan tree.
 
Chief leaf man sees a leaf
in the corner of the pool
and shouts in Vietnamese.
Leaf man number two crouches, 
picks it out.
 
The apprentice leaf boy,
conical hat,
takes a broom from the storeroom.
Sweeps.
 
The hotel dog – a Saigon mongrel - watches.
 
Eternal – mythological – war of leaves.
The frangipani quickens.
 
I watch its petals drop upon the water.
 
A stiffening breeze from Saigon River.
The palm trees writhe and thrash.
 
 
Gigi Picetti

Actor, Genoese Activist, Molotov Cocktail 

1939-2022

I lived in the caruggi, lived in the Sottoripa
the streets pushing deeper and deeper.
 
I lived in the vicoli:
lamentation, catastrophe, chicory.
 
Ubiquitous Gigi would come and go.
He once knew Dario Fo.
 
I seem to remember Gigi Picetti
had a machete.
 
The day – in question - was hot and hazy.
He swirled it about
 
to frighten the piccolo borghese.
 

Kristina Adams, "Revenge of the Redhead"

Kristina Adams is the author of 20 novels, 3 books for writers, 1 poetry collection, and too many blog posts to count. She publishes ghost stories as K.C.Adams. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her dog or inflicting cooking experiments on her boyfriend. Her website is here. 

About Revenge of the Redhead
In her debut poetry collection, bestselling author Kristina Adams channels female rage. Anger, hatred, envy – all those things society tells women they shouldn’t feel, let alone express, are explored in this confessional collection. It takes you on a journey from heartbreak to friendship breakups to workplace bullying, ending on true love and hope for the future. Whether you’re in a good mood, a bad mood, or somewhere in between, Revenge of the Redhead has a poem for you. You can read more about Revenge of the Redhead here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection.

From Revenge of the Redhead, by Kristina Adams

Enough.

I split myself in two
in the hopes of pleasing you
But it doesn’t matter what I do
I’ll never be good enough
for you.


Rocking Chairs

You said we’d be old ladies in our rocking chairs
But how can we be when you were never there?
Friendship is more than just fair weather
I want a friend who’s here forever
not someone who’s in love with spring
but can’t handle the bad weather winter brings

You left the rocking chair beside me empty
When you decided you’d had enough of me
But you were ‘just’ a friend.
And no one talks about how when friendship ends
it hurts just as much, if not more
sitting beside that open door.