Apryl Skies, "Elements & Angels"

Apryl Skies is a California native, an award-winning author, filmmaker, and founder of Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House. Skies’ writing is highly aesthetic, lyrical and provocative. She now resides among the ancient saguaros, colourful street art and opulent monsoon skies of Tucson AZ.

About Elements & Angels, by Apryl Skies
Elements & Angels is a wildly imaginative collection of poetry by award-winning author, Apryl Skies. Like snapshots capturing memories, past lives, Skies draws a full spectrum of emotion from each sacred moment, moulding them into cinematic poems, dramatic recollections and gritty vignettes. Skies navigates her way through an uncertain world recognizing the magic of the mundane. These poems are time capsules and the messages within overflow with thought-provoking metaphor. Long-awaited and epic in scale this collection reads like a survivor anthem.

From Elements & Angels

Poems inspired by Los Angeles

LosT Angeles

City to cinders
Buried beneath soot and ash
Paradise wounded

Fire at the Midnight Matinee

The entire southern California coast
bursts into flame

Radioactive egos tread water
exploding into a sea of cinder

centerfolds and cardboard cut-outs 
with their manufactured smiles, 
flailing arms, and yoga mats
rush toward a painted 
Hollywood horizon 
scraping the gum from their heels.

Ushers rip perforated tickets,
viewers take their seats
awaiting the next Black Dahlia

Mouths agape
full of popcorn
and imitation butter.

Poems inspired by Tucson

Tucson Landscape

Mai tai sunset sky
Over desert horizon
Coyote and moon


Oracle Starlings

Starlings in flight 
their peculiar formations 
mingle with the ghosts
above the cemetery on Oracle Road

a choreographed birdsong,
a dance with the dead
at twilight

here on Oracle road
the sun sinks
beneath the Tucson landscape
into the shadows of ancient Saguaros

where no one is less alive 
than the living

115 Degrees Fahrenheit 

I tickle Mexico 
to return to you
across desert horizons 
of saguaros and mesquite
miles rippled with heat
trundling onto this tired highway, 
my bridge back home …

And I could not love you more
as I lean heavy into your indifference,
once my soft place to land
now a shattered citadel 
of infinite distances

And those raw truths 
that continue to burn and consume
our existence, and each of these
haunting stars above
revealing all our unremarkable postures

How very foolish we are 
to think any one of us 
worthy of crown.

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. 

Tom Sykes, "The Years of Travelling Anxiously"

 

Tom Sykes is the author of seven books. His reportage and travel writing has appeared in New Statesman, The Independent, the Scotsman, New Internationalist and numerous other titles all over the world. He is Associate Professor in Creative Writing and Global Journalism at the University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

About The Years of Travelling Anxiously, by Tom Sykes
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the anxious traveller, where panic strikes in the most serene situations, where each time you're convinced that the symptoms are in fact physical and your lungs or heart will stop working, and the only relief is a paramedic telling you that you won't die despite being stuck with them in an ambulance in a smoky Global Southern gridlock.

Over the last twenty years, writer and academic Tom Sykes has been lucky enough to travel all over the world. But his trips have often been marred - if not ruined - by anxiety. Part travelogue, part wellbeing memoir, The Years of Travelling Anxiously recounts jittery visits to Nigeria to get married and undergo IVF treatment, stressful encounters with bigots and bureaucrats in France, the Philippines and the USA, and what can be learned about mental health on the road from a baby with an inspiringly calm attitude to travel.

The Years of Travelling Anxiously tries to solve a lifelong conundrum about the causes and consequences of panic and distress, and in so doing help other anxious travellers, or indeed anyone who gets anxious about anything, wherever they go.

You can read more about The Years of Travelling Anxiously on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the book. 

From The Years of Travelling Anxiously 
I thought I’d learned. Grown. Don’t we all? We cling to these stories of progress in both society and our personal lives. From birth we’re fed maxims about life getting easier as it goes. Face your fear, conquer your fear. "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger," wrote Nietzsche. I thought I’d spent enough time in the Philippines to have squished all fear of it. After living here plus eight trips over the last thirteen years, I’ve toughed out the heat, the traffic jams, the pollution, two minor car crashes. I’ve been to the places where drug-users were executed by vigilantes. I’ve interviewed an activist who was hounded at home by a soldier who warned them to stop dissing the regime – or die. I stayed cool on all those occasions. 

I thought I’d devised strategies. I’d learned to pass the auto-stalemates by looking out the window and noting graffiti, adverts or the arbitrary poetry of urban breakdown – storm-dislodged hyacinths mantling the Pasig River, kids racing each other through a concrete pipe abandoned diagonally across a Cubao backstreet. If there was nothing to see, I’d read a book or pen my own. Writers shouldn’t be short of material in a mesmerising city like Manila. 

So why now am I in a taxi on Kalayaan Avenue, Quezon City, shaking like machine gun recoil, battling for my breath, launching water down my torrid throat? Why has the soothing inner voice of curiosity – how interesting is this, how fascinating is that – declined into the gravelly tones of paranoia? Will I make my interview on time? Are my questions facile and white and privileged? Do I smell? Why is the hand-fan strapped to the head rest in front of me only multiplying the amount of warm air rather than cooling me down? Will I have enough change for the driver at drop-off? Does the driver know where he’s going? Am I going to die? A Philippine taxi with rear seatbelts is as common as a good film starring Gerard Butler. 

These are rookie worries – or should be. Worrying about these worries only adds to the worry. It’s a self-perpetuating process.  

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

Hilda Hoy (金邦琳), "Mother Tongue"

Hilda Hoy (金邦琳) is a Taiwanese Canadian writer, editor, and translator based in Berlin. In addition to working as a reporter for the Toronto Star and the Prague Post, she has published narrative non-fiction in Roads & Kingdoms, Slate, BBC Travel, and Narratively, as well as a travel guidebook titled The HUNT: Berlin. 

She is currently working on an essay collection exploring the entanglement of identity and language in individuals with backgrounds of migration or displacement. In December 2024, this project saw Hilda serve as writer in residence at the Taiwan Literature Base in Taipei. The diaspora experience and examinations of identity are central themes in her writing.

About Mother Tongue, by Hilda Hoy
In Mother Tongue, Hilda Hoy explores the manifold capacities of language: to shape one’s sense of self, to bring together, to hold apart.

Raised in Taiwan by her Taiwanese mother and Canadian father, bilingual from the beginning, Hoy explores her experience of growing up with otherness, and traces how English became her dominant tongue. After many years living in Canada and Europe, her Chinese-speaking self packed into a box and sealed shut, the repercussions of her loss of Mandarin are thrown into sharp focus when her mother is diagnosed with dementia, and begins losing the ability to speak.

A tender exploration of grief and reconnection, of belonging and self, Mother Tongue is the story of a journey to locate one’s voice between hybrid places.

You can read more about Mother Tongue on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the book. 

From Mother Tongue
When my father was at work and my mother had errands to run, we sometimes went into the city by taxi. These journeys followed a pattern. Crooning ballads on the radio, the smell of cigarette smoke and perm solution. The crinkle-haired driver examining us in the rearview mirror, brow scrunched in puzzlement. Zhèxiē háizǐ shì shuí de? Whose children are these?

Wǒ de, my mother would reply. They’re mine.

Crooning ballad on the radio. Cigarette smoke. Exclamations of disbelief. How could a woman like her have such white children? They’re mine, my mother would repeat, her jaw tensing ever so slightly. Or: You’re right, I found them on the street. The driver would laugh, but she did not. I understood every word but said nothing, watching the world go by through glass. It seemed pointless to speak when my face spoke for me, telling the only home I’d ever known that I did not belong.