Summer News 2026

Our last News post was back at the end of March. You can read it here. Since then, lots has been happening, so here's an update from Creative Writing students and staff in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester.

To start with, this blog, Creative Writing at Leicester, has now had well over 1 million readers. At the same time, our sister site, Everybody's Reviewing, has now passed the 2 million mark. Thank you to all our readers, contributors, editors, reviewers, authors. We never guessed these two blogs would be read so widely when we first set them up!  

In Spring, the Centre for New Writing, in conjunction with Everybody's Reviewing, ran a Book Review Competition for current undergraduate and postgraduate students. You can see the results of the competition, including links to the winning reviews, here. 

Congratulations to Jess Bacon, MA Creative Writing graduate, whose book I'm Just a Girl has been published by Piatkus. You can read more about it on the publisher's website here. 

Congratulations to Joe Bedford, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose short story collection Mating Habits will be published by Parthian Books in 2027.

Aamani Bommareddy, BA Journalism with Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. The review was awarded an Honorable Mention in our 2026 Book Review Competition.

Charlie Black, BA English with Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. The review won Second Prize in our 2026 Book Review Competition.

Congratulations to Constantine, MA Creative Writing graduate, who has published his new children's novel, The Lady of Atlantis. You can read more about it here. He has also edited and published a new anthology of writing by students at Ellistown Primary School, The Sum of Our Parts. You can read more about the book here.  

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Kristy Diaz who has contributed an interview to the new book Rebel Grrrls: The Real Story of Women and Punk by Molly Tie. Read more here.  

Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke, PhD Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. The review won First Prize in our 2026 Book Review Competition. 

Congratulations to Cathy Galvin, PhD Creative Writing student, whose debut poetry collection Ethnology has been shortlisted for the Laurel Prize 2026. Ethnology has also been longlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. You can read more on the publisher's website here. The book has been featured on this blog here, and reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing here. Over the last few months, Cathy has been giving readings across the UK and Ireland.

Congratulations to Beth Gaylard, who recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing. 

Congratulations to Tim Hannigan, PhD graduate, whose book The Pathless Land: Finding a Way Across Ireland, will be published by Bloomsbury this September. Read more here. 

Congratulations to Katherine Howey, who has a Certificate in Higher Education in Creative Writing, on the publication of her historical novel In Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. You can read more about it here. 

"Dead Man's Hollow," a short story by PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle, has just been published in a new anthology called Perfect Circle from Uncertain Stories. You can read more about it here. 

Felicity James, Associate Professor at Leicester, along with her colleague Dr Rachel Winter have started their AHRC project Empathy, Difficulty, Difference: Creative Curiosity in Practice. Run jointly between English and the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare, the project explores the role of creativity in fostering empathy. So far, this has included a workshop about ways of developing creative engagement with healthcare professionals, held at Glenfield in July. You can read the first responses here. Felicity's new essay "The Wild Essay, Or, the Essayist responds to the University Policy on Generative Artificial Intelligence in Learning, Teaching and Assessment"  has been published by the journal New Writing.

Congratulations to Sabyn Javeri, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose story "Priority" has been longlisted for the 4th Write Short Story Prize, run by 4th Estate publishers and The Guardian. Read more here.  

Rim Asma Khalifa, BA English with Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. The review was awarded an Honorable Mention in our 2026 Book Review Competition. 

Congratulations to Mathew Lopez-Bland, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose story "Purple and Green" is winner of the 2026 Honeyfeed Story Contest. You can read it here. Mathew recently completed his PhD in Creative Writing.

In May 2026, Anna O'Sullivan, BA English and MA Modern and Contemporary Literature with Creative Writing graduate, worked as guest editor of Everybody's Reviewing. She has written reviews here and here. 

Olivia Peachey, BA English with Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. The review was awarded an Honorable Mention in our 2026 Book Review Competition.

Dan Powell, PhD Creative Writing graduate, has an essay, "The End Is Never Where You Think," in the new book, Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary, ed. Karen Stevens and Jonathan Taylor, published by Bloomsbury. 

Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet, poetry collection by MA and PhD Creative Writing graduate Cathi Rae, has been reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Sally Shaw, MA Creative Writing graduate, has written reviews for Everybody's Reviewing here, here, and here. 

Anupriya Sisodia, MA Creative Writing student, undertook work experience as guest editor of Everybody's Reviewing in June 2026. She interviewed author Annabelle Slator for the blog here. She has written reviews for the site here, here, here and here. 

Congratulations to Hannah Stevens, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose new collection of short stories, On the Bodies of Strangers, has just been published by Wind & Bones. You can read more about it here. 

Laura Sygrove, MA Creative Writing graduate, worked as guest editor of Everybody's Reviewing in July 2026. She interviewed author Suyin Du Bois for the blog here. She has written a review for the site here. 

Jonathan Taylor, Associate Professor, has co-edited with Karen Stevens Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary: Reflection, Influence Process. The book has now been published by Bloomsbury Academic, and features an anthology of sample reflective commentaries, alongside guidance about writing reflectively. You can read more about the book here. Jonathan's memoir, A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons was shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the International Rubery Book Awards. You can read more here. His story "He never writes to me no more" was published in The Morning Star here. He has written reviews for The Morning Star here and Everybody's Reviewing here.

Congratulations to Paul Taylor-McCartney, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose debut non-fiction title Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall's Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity has been published by The History Press. You can read more about it here. His story "Of What Remained" is featured in the anthology Salt & Stone, published by Hermitage Press. You can read more here. He has written reviews for Everybody's Reviewing here, here and here. Paul's novel Sisters of the Pentacle was recently reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Aidan Trulove, MA Creative Writing graduate, has written an article on her MA Dissertation, "How to End Your Story," for Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Congratulations to Anna Walsh, MA Creative Writing graduate and soon-to-be PhD student, who successfully pitched her short film Bike Park to The Slate, a filmmaking and talent development programme based at Leicester’s Phoenix Cinema. Bike Park, a workplace comedy, is currently in development and will be shown at the Phoenix in March 2027. She has also written an article about her MA, "Internal Windows," here. 

Associate Professor Harry Whitehead's novel White Road has been shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2026. The winner will be announced on 17th September. You can find out more, along with a variety of related podcasts, interviews and so on, on the prize website here. Harry's paper on the history of Soviet Russian Creative Writing programmes was published in the journal New Writing. You can read it here.

Congratulations to Lisa Williams, MA Creative Writing graduate, on the publication of her debut novella, The Longest Day, by Road Song Books. Lisa first drafted some of the book as part of her MA Dissertation. You can read more about it here.

Congratulations to Lee Wright who has recently completed his PhD in Creative Writing. He has also written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here.

Eve Makis, "Where the Earth Holds Secrets"

Born in Nottingham, Eve Makis worked as a journalist before turning to fiction. She is the author of five novels published by Transworld and Sandstone Press, including The Spice Box Letters, shortlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the East Midlands Book Award. She co-wrote the award-winning film Boy on the Bridge and co-authored the life writing guide The Accidental Memoir (HarperCollins). Eve is a fiction tutor on the MA Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She is co-creator of the life writing website the Minute Memoir. Her latest novel, Where the Earth Holds Secrets, is published by Claret Press. 

 

About Where the Earth Holds Secrets, by Eve Makis
Set on the divided island of Cyprus, Where the Earth Holds Secrets follows Nuray, a risk-taking journalist known for uncovering the hidden graves of the missing. When she reaches out to Haris with new information about his father’s disappearance, she pulls him into a past Haris has long tried to avoid.

The case is blown open with the arrival of Elena Clayton, an English forensic archaeologist seeking a fresh start, whose work begins to uncover secrets buried deep beneath the island’s soil. As Nuray, Haris, and Elena are drawn together, they must navigate suspicion, betrayal, and their own tangled histories.

Inspired by the writer’s own family history and the work of inspirational journalist Sevgul Uludag, the book reflects on Cyprus’s unresolved past, tracing a path through loss and remembrance toward the possibility of healing.

You can read more about Where the Earth Holds Secrets on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the novel. 

From Where the Earth Holds Secrets

Chapter 1

Cyprus 2016

Nuray had promised herself: No More Investigations. 

But the case of the missing man had found its way into her life one sunlit afternoon in Yusef’s coffee shop as she lingered over a square of walnut baklava. An old man had leaned in close, his breath warm at her ear. ‘Nuray Hasan,’ he’d whispered. ‘I have something for you. The name of a witness. An address.’ 

And just like that, she was back on the hunt. 

The sun scorched the battered bonnet of her Fiat Punto as she drove along the Karpas Peninsula, an elongated finger of land that gave the island its distinctive shape. The road cut through parched fields where white-bellied donkeys roamed like Holy cattle. Cicadas droned in the stillness, like the murmur of missing souls. 

The man she was searching for was a cold case. Like so many others who had disappeared during the island’s troubled years, in the fifties and sixties, in 1974 when Cyprus was invaded. Soldiers, civilians, woman and children, newborns too. She’d heard stories of people being dragged from their homes at night, marched off buses, even snatched from hospital beds. Their names were spoken at family gatherings, at official committees, in dark corners and with nighttime prayers.

The Cypriot dust streamed through the open window, clinging to her skin like cheap glitter. It was everywhere – on her clothes, in her hair, under her eyelids, scratching her eyes. A fig tree loomed ahead, pale and weathered, its trunk whitewashed to protect it from the heat. Turn right at the white-washed fig, the old man had written on a napkin in Yusef’s café. In all her years of searching, trees had helped to signpost the way. Cypress, acacia, carobs and wild olives guiding her through remote stretches where farmers still ploughed with cart and horse. 

She had begun her career in journalism writing about fetes and festivals, petty thefts and the slow rhythm of local news. Then she had started investigating the disappearances. No one called them murder victims. At least, not at that point. 

Her research had led her to yellowing archives, old photographs, to grieving mothers and unmarked graves. Her curiosity about the missing had turned into a burden, yes, but a mission too, a passion that gave her life meaning. It was one thing to write about tragedy from a distance; quite another to connect with the victims, to play a role in solving age-old mysteries. 

Aidan Trulove, "How to End Your Story"

Aidan Trulove is a writer from Austin, Texas, who specialises in experimental fiction, mostly fantasy and horror. She mainly writes for a Young Adult (YA) audience, though also enjoys horrifying her professors with her encyclopaedic knowledge of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film she has incorporated into all of her academic work (without penalisation). She has been published by the Agave Review and the Skyline Literary Magazine, and currently works as a bookseller and story competition judge. 

Below, Aidan has written a letter addressed to future MA Creative Writing hopefuls, discussing her time writing her dissertation, The Unchosen One. 

How to End Your Story

To My Fellow Creative Writers,

When our dear lecturer and head of program, Jonathan Taylor, asked me to write about my process in crafting my dissertation, I was a bit surprised. Not because of anything about Jonathan, but due what he now knows about my own personal style. Even after earning my MA, I’m really not the formal academic-type. Here again, I probably won’t reference much of the theory that I’ve learned, or the articles (the many, many articles) I’ve read on the practice of writing. Instead, I’m going to tell you in the most unabashed way I can what it felt like to write my dissertation: The Unchosen One.  

Probably not the most dramatic title I could have chosen, but too late now. 

I came into this program having a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to finish my book, the first book in my Young Adult fiction series, which up until recently I’ve been calling The Unchosen One. (I’m changing this title because, now that I work in bookselling, I’ve realized there’s a Middle Grade book by the exact same name). I’ve been working on this project since the start of the COVID pandemic, when I had nothing else going on. The story of Gwen, my protagonist, and her misadventures in the magical world of Iaxos, have been my constant companion through two degrees, my entire relationship with my now-fianceé, and a series of moves from Texas to California, California to Texas, and Texas all the way to England. 

Still, even as I crept closer to the end of Gwen’s story, I found myself unable to part with it. I was terrified to let the story end - to face the beckoning crescendo at the culmination of the piece, one I didn’t feel skilled enough to write. I knew where I wanted Gwen’s story to go, but I didn’t know how to get there. Hence, deciding to get my MA. 

The single most important thing I learned during my time at Leicester is this: all stories have to end. They can have a concrete ending, an open-ending, an ending that falls somewhere in-between, but there comes a time where the words on the page must simply stop. Whether it’s a five-line poem or a twelve-thousand word dissertation, it’s not healthy to keep a story going indefinitely, for you or your writing. Especially since I plan on writing more books, I was encouraged in my dissertation to take this plunge, and to find out what an ending looked like, for me and for Gwen. 

At first, it felt like I was flying blind, because the research I wanted about the theory behind YA books just doesn’t exist yet, given that it’s a relatively new genre. This led me to switch to a more practical approach: reading YA books, mainly ones that were the first in their series, to look at how they ended and think about why. Given the timespan for the MA, I mainly focused on series I already loved: Suzanne Collins’ Hungergames, Tracey Deonn’s Legendborn, and Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orïsha. I looked at these series, observing a) how the protagonists changed from the start to the end of the first book, b) what questions the end of the stories did/didn’t answer, and c) the overall effect of the ending on me as a reader. 

Between these factors, I noticed something: none of these stories came to a polished end. As they approached their final pages, they opened the worlds of their protagonists even wider, while also, as Harry Whitehead would put it, "chasing their characters up a tree and continuing to throw rocks at them." I also realized, it isn’t enough to scare your readers into caring about your main character, by simply leaving them dangling over a cliff. Most of the authors I read took things a step further, by using the very final moments of the book to take something away that their protagonists could never get back, and then, after backing them into a corner, finally allowing these figures to reach their true potential. 

To end, here is a small excerpt from one of the final chapters of my book. I hope you enjoy, and if you happen to be a fellow YA/fantasy/horror writer, don’t hesitate to ask Jonathan for my contact information. Writing is a team sport, and I couldn’t have done any of this without the advice of my lecturers, and the support of my peers. 

From The Unchosen One

Once when I was around fifteen, my family left me alone at the house for a few days. I was given free reign of the kitchen, with instructions to throw out any food in the fridge that I didn’t eat before it went bad. I forgot, and on the morning they came home, we opened the fridge to find a very brown, very sour steak that had sat too long and gotten exposed to air. My mom nearly threw up on the spot, and I was tasked with throwing out the old meat, along with cleaning out and sanitizing the entire fridge. That was the smell that reached me as I curled my shield into my body, only to feel something new, and wet, soaking the edge of my clothing ...

Good luck with your own writing! Yours truly,

Aidan Trulove

Book Review Competition 2026

Recently, our popular review blog, Everybody’s Reviewing, passed one and a half million readers. To celebrate this milestone, Everybody’s Reviewing and the Centre for New Writing are running a book review competition. 

The competition is open to all current undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Leicester. First prize is £50 in Amazon gift vouchers. Second prize is £25 in vouchers. All entries will be considered for publication on the website. 

All you have to do is write a short book review (200-400 words) of a book you’ve read recently and enjoyed. The review should be positive overall, so choose a book you've enjoyed! The book doesn’t have to be new: it can be any work of fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry from any time, by any author. Please include a short (2-line) biography of yourself at the end of the review. 

Please send your entries (no more than one per student) to this email address: everybodysreviewing@gmail.com. You can also use the same email address for any queries you have about the competition. There is no entry fee. 

The deadline for submissions is midday on Wednesday 10 June 2026.

Competition rules are as follows:

1. Reviews should be between 200 and 400 words. All work must be in English. 
2. All entries must be submitted via email to everybodysreviewing@gmail.com.
3. All entries will be considered for publication on the Everybody's Reviewing website. 
4. Entries should not have been previously published.
5. The competition is open to all current undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Leicester up till the competition's final submission date.
6. Copyright remains with the author. Entrants give permission to have their work placed on the Everybody’s Reviewing website for an indefinite period.
7. Entries that do not comply with the rules will be disqualified.
8. Decisions of the judge(s) are final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding those decisions.

Good luck! We'll look forward to reading your reviews. 

Professional Writing and Publishing on Creative Writing at Leicester

Over the years, we've published numerous articles on professional writing, publishing and other aspects of "employability" in relation to Creative Writing. So we thought it might be a good idea to bring some of these together. 

We embed professional writing skills at all levels (undergraduate and postgraduate) in our Creative Writing courses at Leicester. We believe it's a fundamental (and also fascinatingly varied) part of the subject. 

Below, you can find links to many of the features we've run on aspects of the professional writing world over the last few years. Some of these are general, some written by students and graduates, some by professionals beyond the university. Just click on the links to read more. 

Books by Students on Creative Writing at Leicester

Resources and Opportunities in the Media 

Some Useful Online Resources for Creative Writers 

The MA in Creative Writing: What You Can Expect

How Creative Writing Skills Can Make You A Better Copywriter, by Kristina Adams 

What Ghostwriting Taught Me, by Charis Buckingham

Five Years of Publishing Beyond the Mainstream: On Setting Up and Running Renard Press, by Will Dady

Pitch Perfect: Make Money from Your Writing, by Simon Elson

The Author as Promoter: A How-to Guide, by Charlie Hill

On Running a Literary Festival, by Charlie Hill

Reflecting: The Lessons I've Learned as a Writer, by Jenny Kane

Small Press Publishing: The Dos and Don'ts, by Isabelle Kenyon

In Conversation with Literary Journals, ed. Isabelle Kenyon and Charley Barnes

Our Future Storytellers: A Creative and Critical Writing Course, by Amirah Mohiddin

Writing for Games: Theory & Practice, by Hannah Nicklin

Multiple Middles: Storytelling in Games, by Hannah Nicklin

So You Want to Self-Publish? by Alicia Saccoh

Is An Internship for You? by Lisa Smalley

My Work Experience at Shoestring Press, by Sonia Tailor 

On Applications and Employability, by Jonathan Taylor

Creative and Critical Digressions: On the Creative Writing PhD, by Paul Taylor-McCartney

Red Flags and Green Flags in Publishing, by Anna Vaught

Do Too Many Cooks Spoil the Draft? Some Reflections On Amateur Hour's Second Zine and Group Feedback, by Nina Walker

Work Experience, Copywriting and Journalism, by India Wentworth

The Civil Service Fast Stream: Career Opportunities, by Gregory Wilson

On Applications and Employability

By Jonathan Taylor

As part of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, we run a major module on "employability" called Applications: Publishing, Teaching & Other Stories. This core module considers the vocational and professional aspects of Creative Writing, looking beyond the university workshop to the world outside. It's a crucial part of the Master's degree. I see Creative Writing as a hybrid subject, which brings together practice-based, research-based and vocational forms of knowledge. 

The module deals with three key strands in relation to employability: 

• the dissemination of Creative Writing in public and professional spheres (e.g. the publication and performance of Creative Writing);
• other diverse ways in which Creative Writers subsist in the world (e.g. through portfolio careers, made up of teaching, journalism, editing, writing for professional briefs, etc.);
• the myriad related fields to which the transferable skills that Creative Writing develops can be applied.

These three strands might also be seen as concentric circles, moving from the immediate vocational context of the dissemination of Creative Writing, to professional contexts directly related to Creative Writing, to the much wider circle of professions which draw on the writing skills students have developed. We look at major and independent publishing, the role of literary agents, literary magazines and reviewing, performance contexts and techniques, writing for briefs, and so on. The module includes workshops, seminars, talks as well as guest speakers from the professional writing world. 

I've been teaching the professional side of Creative Writing for twenty-five years now, and I've seen students go on to work in a myriad of different fields. In a literate economy, the value of writing well, reading critically, storytelling skills, imaginative use of language, communication skills can hardly be overestimated. Jobs and roles I've seen students go into after studying Creative Writing have included (among many more): novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, playwright, radio writer, speech writer, creative non-fiction writer, travel writer, memoirist, children's author, PhD student, academic, teacher (in all sorts of different contexts, and at all levels), tutor, publisher, performance poet, stand-up comedian, events manager, arts manager, festival manager, arts programme coordinator, literature development officer, public relations manager, human resources manager, advertiser, politician, journalist, literary magazine editor, commercial magazine editor, game designer, radio producer, radio presenter, voice-over artist, TV presenter, producer, web content creator, publicist, marketer, film producer,  accountant, literary agent, editor, copy editor, commissioning editor, copywriter, web designer, solicitor (through a conversion course), doctor (through a conversion course), civil servant, librarian, archivist, financial manager, administrator, counsellor, bookseller, actor, reviewer, arts organisation director ... and so on and so forth. 

Recently, though, I've been thinking a lot about "employability," and about how we should perhaps understand the term much more broadly. Given the state of the world, I've been thinking about the other invaluable (yet more intangible) roles Creative Writing graduates often take up, whether as writers or in their lives as a whole. Ideally, employability shouldn't just be a matter of "training" for particular roles in the capitalist world; it might also be about changing those roles, dreaming up new ones, maybe even dreaming of changing the world itself (however slightly). After all, Creative Writing, by definition, encourages you to re-imagine the world, or to imagine new worlds. In that regard, I think employability in Creative Writing is also about roles that have never seemed more vital in our society - such as dreamer, idealist, utopianist, magical thinker, empath, mentor, radical, creative, artist, activist, communitarian, critical thinker, social critic, optimist, pessimist, optimistic-pessimist, pessimistic-optimist, visionary, prophet, poet, storyteller, "unacknowledged legislator of the world" (as Shelley puts it). 

Spring News 2026

Our last News post was back in December. You can read it here. Lots has been happening since then in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester, so here is an update on student and staff news. Thank you so much to everyone who helps make this such a vibrant community of writers. It really is a very special thing to be part of.

Firstly, congratulations to all of the MA and PhD Creative Writing students who graduated in January 2026! PhD graduate Joe Bedford was invited to speak at the ceremony. You can see his speech here. If you are interested in the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, you can read more about it here. Applications are open for Autumn entry 2026. 

From the 18th to 21st March, the University of Leicester held the 2026 Literary Leicester Festival, which, as usual, included lots of wonderful speakers, panels and events. As part of the festival, we hosted our annual Creative Writing Student Showcase. Undergraduate, postgraduate and graduate creative writers who performed at the event included Laura Besley, Nina Walker, Anupriya Sisodia, Lisa Williams, Olivia Peachey, Brandon Clune, Sophie Stockdale, Beth Gaylard, Mithila Dutta Roy, Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke and Laurie Cusack. Thanks to everyone who made it such a lovely occasion - a brilliant celebration of everything students do. 

Our blog Everybody's Reviewing has now had over one a half million readers, and Creative Writing at Leicester has had over 800,000 readers. Thanks to everyone - our students, authors, reviewers, editors, interviewers and readers - involved. Back in January, lots of our students, graduates and staff contributed to our annual Favourite Reads of the Year article on Everybody's Reviewing. You can read it here. 

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Jess Bacon, whose book I'm Just a Girl will be published by Piatkus in June. Read more here.

In March, PhD Creative Writing graduate Joe Bedford hosted a panel for the European Network for Short Fiction Research, which also included Jonathan Taylor as one of the invited speakers. 

Congratulations to Laura Besley, PhD Creative Writing student, whose story "The Only Shade of Time is Gray" won third prize in the Henshaw Press Short Story Prize. Her story "These Days You're Kinda Okay" has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2025 by Literary Namjooning Magazine. You can read it here. Her story "Seventeen Years from Now" has been published in Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine here. She has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Tracey Foster, MA Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of Muse by Ruth Millington for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Congratulations to Cathy Galvin, PhD Creative Writing student, whose debut poetry collection, Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara, has been published by Bloodaxe. She has been giving readings across the UK and Ireland, including at the Emerald Centre in Leicester. You can read more about Ethnology here. 

Congratulations to Beth Gaylard, who has now completed her PhD in Creative Writing in March.

Congratulations to PhD graduate Tim Hannigan, whose new book The Pathless Land: Finding a Way Across Ireland will be published by Apollo in August this year. Read more here. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle who won second prize in the Hammond House Literary Awards Short Story category for her story, "Leporidae." Her story "Humbug Shark" has been nominated for Best Short Fictions 2025 by Does It Have Pockets?. You can read it here. Her story "Auld Gallowa" has been longlisted for the Bedford Short Story Competition.  

Congratulations to Mathew Lopez-Bland, who completed his PhD in Creative Writing in March. 

Iain Minney, MA Creative Writing student, has written a review for Everybody's Reviewing of The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn. You can read it here. 

Kimaya Tushar Patil, MA Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of The Cruel Prince by Holly Black for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Karen Powell-Curtis, PhD Creative Writing graduate, has written a review of Have they marked you with arrows? by Jayne Stanton for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Congratulations to Cathi Rae, PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose new poetry collection, Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet, has recently been published by Coalville CAN Publishing. You can read more about the collection here. You can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here. She has also written three articles on "Poetry for Everyone" for Writing Magazine. You can see more details here. 

Mithila Dutta Roy has reviewed Kit de Waal's Supporting Cast for Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Anupriya Sisodia, MA Creative Writing student, has been undertaking work experience as editor for Everybody's Reviewing. She has written a review for the site here. 

Jonathan Taylor's second novel Melissa, published in 2015, has been named as one of Stoke-on-Trent's "100 Books," a list of one hundred books from the Potteries to celebrate a hundred years of the city. He has written reviews for The Morning Star, which you can read here, here and here. His story "Cassie and the Green Knight," commissioned by the West Midlands Readers' Network, is in the anthology 5 Stories. With Karen Stevens, he has also been co-editing a book of essays, Creative Writing and the Critical Commentary, which will be published by Bloomsbury in June 2026. 

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing graduate Paul Taylor-McCartney whose historical fantasy epic, the 5-book Broken Pentacle series, is going to be published by Blue Poppy Publishing. The second of the series, Guardians of the Pentacle, will be published in November this year. You can read about the first book here. His book, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall's Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, will be published by the History Press in June this year. Paul has also written reviews of The Language of Now by Anne Caldwell and The Subtle Art of Short Fiction, ed. Isabelle Kenyon, both for Everybody's Reviewing here and here. 

Harry Whitehead will be reading and speaking at Oundle Lit Fest on the evening of Friday 17th April, and Wirksworth Book Festival on the afternoon of Saturday 25th April. He'll be talking about his novel White Road, which you can read more about here. 

Congratulations to Lisa Williams, MA Creative Writing graduate, whose novella provisionally entitled The Longest Day will be published by Road Song Books later this year. Lisa has also written a review for Everybody's Reviewing which you can read here. 

The MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester: What You Can Expect

Our acclaimed MA in Creative Writing is open to applications here. We think it's important to be up-front about what support you and your writing will receive if you embark on the course. So here (below) we've set out as clearly as possible what you can expect from the course, whether you take it full-time or part-time. We believe passionately that Creative Writing can be taught - that it's almost entirely a learnt skill - and that all students who finish this course are, almost inevitably, better writers as a result of the intense study provided by a Master's degree. 

Please do let us know if you have any questions about the MA, by emailing jt265@le.ac.uk. 

What you can expect on the MA in Creative Writing at Leicester:

• Four taught 30-credit semester-long modules: EN 7040 Research Methods in Creative Writing, EN 7041 Styles, EN 7042 Applications, EN 7043 Substances 
• An individually-supervised Dissertation in Creative Writing, from May to September (EN 7044)
• One two-hour workshop per week (usually ten weeks) per 30-credit semester-long taught module (so you have one two-hour workshop per week if you are part-time, two two-hour workshops per week if you are full-time)
• In-depth introductions to two particular forms (e.g. poetry and prose fiction)
• In-depth introductions to two particular themes (these vary year on year, but have included subjects such as Space, Memory, Time, Climate Change, Place, Creative Reading, etc.)
• Workshops on research skills (which might include subjects like using oral histories, archival research, interdisciplinary research, etc.)
• Workshops on aspects of the professional writing world (such as publishing, performance, teaching, etc.)
• Thorough feedback on summative assignments (i.e. formal assessments)
• A supervisor for your Dissertation over Summer, who provides individual supervision and feedback on draft sections
• A personal tutor who oversees your progress, and whom you meet at least twice a semester for an individual tutorial
• Office hours or pre-arranged appointments, in which you can drop in to see tutors (either in person or electronically)
• Detailed handouts, resources and learning materials shared on Blackboard (the virtual learning environment)
• Online electronic reading lists for every module
• Continuous email support

And, on top of these formal aspects of the course, you can also normally expect additional support and resources, such as:

• On-going feedback on formative work-in-progress from peers and staff
• Guest lectures and masterclasses by authors, publishers, editors, agents from outside the university (obviously depending on budget and availability)
• Attendance at other events hosted by the Centre for New Writing, the School of Arts, Media and Communication and the annual Literary Leicester Festival 
• Voluntary attendance at any of the undergraduate lectures in Creative Writing
• Access to online resources, including the Creative Writing at Leicester University Facebook group (on which we post opportunities, jobs, events, news, articles), Everybody’s Reviewing, and the Creative Writing at Leicester blog
• Opportunities to gain experience of participating in a major literary festival (i.e. Literary Leicester)
• Performance opportunities (e.g. at Literary Leicester)
• Postgraduate Creative Writing research seminars
• Connections with professional writing and publishing networks
• Electronic forums on which you can share work with other students
• Advice on publishing, teaching, careers, etc. 
• Participation in a vibrant community of Creative Writing students, graduates, local and national authors.

All about the MA in Creative Writing Dissertation at the University of Leicester

Towards the end of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, students concentrate on an individual extended writing project, the Dissertation in Creative Writing. The Dissertation is the students' opportunity to concentrate on a pet major project (e.g. a collection of stories, a poetry collection, a script, an extended extract from a novel, etc.), and develop it with the help of an individual supervisor. This is the students' chance to write what they always wanted to!

The Dissertation usually runs from May to mid-September, after the four taught MA modules have been completed. The Dissertation consists of three stages:

1. In May, students attend the annual Creative Writing Dissertation Day, where they get to share ideas with each other and tutors. Following this, student submit a short proposal about their intended project.

2. Students are then allotted an individual supervisor, who meets with them regularly over Summer, providing feedback and advice on the work in progress. 

3. Students submit their Creative Writing Dissertation in mid-September. 

Over the last few years, we've featured a number of our MA Creative Writing students who have written about their Dissertation experience, so to give a flavour of the (huge) range of different creative possibilities in this respect, we've collected some of these articles (below). There's lots of great writing and research advice here, and some fantastic projects. Do take a look!

If you're interested in either the part-time or full-time MA course in Creative Writing, and would like more information, please do email Jonathan Taylor on jt265@le.ac.uk. You can apply here.

Some Articles by Students about the MA Creative Writing Dissertation on Creative Writing at Leicester. 

Anna O'Sullivan, My MA Creative Dissertation

Mandy Jarvis, Moving on Up: My Creative Writing Dissertation

Tracey Foster, Deep Diving the YA Market: My Creative Writing Dissertation

Kate Durban, The Creative Writing Dissertation

Danni Devenney, Girls Who Play Sports 

Thilsana Gias, Researching and Writing a Historical Dissertation

Rosie Anderson, Managing a Creative Writing Dissertation

Millie Henson, The Call of the Wild in Children's Literature

Tionee Joseph, Mastering the Dissertation

Books by Students on Creative Writing at Leicester

Over the last few years, BA, MA and PhD students and graduates in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester have had amazing success publishing their books and chapbooks - including novels, short story collections, flash collections, novellas-in-flash, poetry collections, memoirs and works of creative non-fiction. We've featured lots of these on this blog, so we thought it might be a good time to collect some of them together, as a way of celebrating these authors' successes - congratulations to all once again!

You can find out more about our BA in English with Creative Writing here, our BA in Journalism with Creative Writing here, our acclaimed MA in Creative Writing here, and our PhD in Creative Writing here. 

Here (below) you can find links to just some of the books we've featured on this blog by Leicester University BA, MA and PhD students and graduates in Creative Writing over the last few years.

Joe Bedford, A Bad Decade for Good People (novel)

Laura Besley, The Almost Mothers (flash fiction collection)

Laura Besley, Un(Natural) Elements (micro-fiction collection)

Constantine, Alien Boy (children's novel for reluctant readers)

Constantine, And things begin to change ... and other stories (short story collection)

Constantine, Jötunheim (children's novel)

Constantine, Tales of the Charnwood (short story collection)

Constantine, Tiya and the Minotaur (children's novel)

Constantine, The Cats of Charnwood Forest (children's novel)

Laurie Cusack, The Mad Road (short story collection)

Kassie Duke, Word Bath (poetry collection)

Cathy Galvin, Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara (poetry collection)

Cathy Galvin, Walking the Coventry Ring Road with Lady Godiva (poetry collection)

Tim Hannigan, The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey (travel writing)

Talia Hibbert, Get a Life, Chloe Brown (novel)

Kathy Hoyle, Chasing the Dragon (novella-in-flash)

Sabyn Javeri (ed.), Ways of Being: Creative Non-Fiction by Pakistani Women (edited anthology)

Kevan Manwaring, Writing Ecofiction (textbook)

Cathi Rae, Just This Side of Seaworthy and Other Poems and Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Poems (poetry collections)

Cathi Rae, Your Cleaner Hates You and Other Poems (poetry collection)

Cathi Rae, Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet (poetry collection)

Anita Sivakumaran, Cold Sun (novel)

Hannah Stevens, In Their Absence (short story collection) 

Paul Taylor-McCartney, Sisters of the Pentacle (YA novel)

Rory Waterman, Come Here to this Gate (poetry collection)

Rory Waterman, Sweet Nothings (poetry collection)

David Wharton, Finer Things (novel)

Cathy Galvin, "Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara"

Congratulations to Cathy Galvin, University of Leicester PhD Creative Writing student, whose poetry collection Ethnology has just been published by Bloodaxe Books!

Cathy Galvin's debut poetry collection, Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara, is published by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and Ireland. She has published three previous pamphlets of poetry, Black & Blue (2014), Rough Translation (2016) and Walking the Coventry Ring Road With Lady Godiva (2019). She is widely published as a poet and short story writer and is the recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, a Heinrich Böll residency and an Arts Council England DYCP award. As a journalist she has worked as a senior editor for Newsweek and the Sunday Times. She founded the Sunday Times Short Story Award and the short story organisation, the Word Factory. She is the editor of Red, an anthology of new writing published by Waterstones. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester and lives near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. 

About Ethnology: A Love Song for Connemara, by Cathy Galvin
Ethnology draws on the mystical cry for the dead of Cathy Galvin's Irish-speaking ancestors. Within an epic narrative she reclaims place, people and language and creates a dialogue with the poets, folklorists and ethnologists who have written about the West of Ireland for their own agenda. Loss, and loss of a mother tongue, are carefully explored. 

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

From Ethnology

Walls

There’s no anvil, brooch, harrow-pin.

The currach’s broken, walls stand without a roof.

All that’s left: a bureau containing bills,

cards, scarves, a Will.

You’re not in view but I can hear a breath

– the well-made dress and phrase.

My made things broke long ago.

They had little purchase on this world.

The creed, letters I do not read.

Solid seem the things that slip away.

Leaving us bone.

We stake a claim, lay foundations,

build and watch it fall.

Within, the comforts that ease survival.

We cut back wilderness, tame, contain

sycamore, birch, bramble, willow, grass.

All return.

Our walls come down, consolations go.

We do not come back. Take away it all

and what is left is who we are.

Our homes are built to go. 

Coventry Carol

You did not sing in Irish or in English.

Never told me what the English did to your people,

were clear you did not want an Irish husband,

someone who might sing sweetly and leave his wife behind,

become a father like yours who did not feed his own children.

When the Irish began bombing Birmingham,

and a shopkeeper refused to serve me in my Catholic

school uniform, your silence filled my mouth.

Creative Writing in Space

As of September, 2026, the University of Leicester is introducing a new MA programme in Space and Society. Grounded in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, this unique interdisciplinary MA will critically examine how humans have imagined, experienced, and interacted with space across time. It will challenge students to think creatively and analytically about the cultural, political, and ethical dimensions of the new space age. The course will be taught under the aegis of the pioneering Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space - a ground-breaking research hub where space exploration meets the arts and humanities. 

The Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester is involved in both the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space, and the new MA in Space and Society. As part of the new programme, we will be offering an optional module called Creative Writing in Space. This exciting interdisciplinary module will be shared between the MA in Creative Writing and the MA in Space and Society, and will be available to students on both programmes. It will be taught by Dr Jonathan Taylor from Creative Writing and Dr Cheryl Hurkett from Genetic and Genome Biology. You can read more about this new module below. Email jt265@le.ac.uk if you want further information!

ABOUT EN 7923 CREATIVE WRITING IN SPACE

This module sends your Creative Writing into space, on a quest to find new worlds, new concepts, new metaphors – to boldly go where no Creative Writing module has gone before. We believe that the universe is simultaneously a scientific phenomenon and a beautiful work of art – a poem, or a (very long) story. We want you to explore cosmological concepts, the tales told by physicists, the metaphors of popular science, and to produce writing that takes on these concepts, tales, metaphors, that extrapolates futures, pasts and alien worlds from them, or that explodes them, pushing their metaphorical implications towards some kind of absurd singularity. 

On the module, you’ll write speculative fiction, scientific poetry, creative non-fiction, or maybe even just realist fiction that draws on the imagery of space in order to explore human psychology – transferring outer space to inner space, as it were. Ultimately, this is how Creative Writing can talk back to Space Studies: if, on the one hand, the module is about how Creative Writing can draw on scientific concepts, on the other, it is also about what science can learn from the very human stories told by poets, novelists, memoirists. 

No previous experience of Creative Writing is necessary to take this module. The module is shared between students on the MA in Space and Society and students on the MA in Creative Writing programmes at the University of Leicester.