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.