Anime, ADHD and Me

By Mathew Lopez-Bland

Having just failed his graduation exam for the third time, Naruto watches on as the rest of his classmates celebrate graduating from the ninja academy.

When I started pitching ideas for my PhD, I knew that I wanted to write about anime, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Japanese animation had been an ever-present in my life, ever since I’d first watched the Pokémon anime, back in the late 90s. Over the years, the medium had come to mean so much to me, but I’d never really thought about why.

Then, in 2021, I got the answer I was looking for, when I was diagnosed with ADHD. I realised that anime mattered to me because throughout my childhood, before my diagnosis, it’d been the characters I’d seen in anime, like Naruto Uzumaki, from Naruto, who’d taught me about myself. 

In Western media, delinquent characters always seemed to be the butt of the joke, the naughty boys that everyone laughed at, but nobody cared for. When an episode of The Simpsons ended, Bart’s life went back to normal. His actions had no lasting consequences, as each week everything started over again. But in anime, things were different. In long running shonen like Naruto, hyperactive and disruptive young boys, like me, were taken seriously. For all of Naruto’s bravado, the show’s early overarching storylines hinge on his isolation, and his desperation to overcome his flaws and be accepted by his peers – feelings I understood all too well.

Within a few months of my diagnosis, I was researching at the University of Leicester, working on a thesis titled, ADHD, Anime, and Writing Creative Non-Fiction. This consisted of a 40,000-word creative non-fiction collection, and a 30,000-word reflective commentary. The creative work used a hybrid form of memoir and essay to explore how my ADHD symptoms had affected my life, and how the stories and characters I’d found in anime had helped me to understand who I was, and where I fit in the world around me. My commentary looked at how experimenting with the structure and form of my essays led to me using more rigid, conventional writing structures, as a kind of "medicine" for my ADHD. 

Now that I am almost a year on from completing my studies, I look back at my PhD as a period of both creative and personal maturation. As I write this, I realise how glad I am that I persevered and insisted on writing about something that meant so much to me. At times, it was a painful and tiring process, but it was also joyous and revelatory, as I found that I learnt almost as much about myself, as I did about the craft of writing. I don’t know where my writing will take me next, but I do know that the my research journey was more rewarding than I had ever anticipated.

About the author
Mathew Lopez-Bland lives on a farm with his fiancé and their pet cat. When he’s not writing, he’s usually watching anime or playing football. He has a PhD in Creative Writing, and his short stories and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines.

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.

Paul Taylor-McCartney, "Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall's Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity"

Congratulations to Paul Taylor-McCartney, UoL PhD Creative Writing graduate, on the publication of his debut non-fiction book, Cornwall Uncharted!

Dr Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer whose interests include queer studies, speculative fiction and teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media. Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, published by The History Press, is his first non-fiction title. You can read more about Cornwall Uncharted below and on the publisher's website here.

About Cornwall Uncharted: Writing Queer Lives Back into the Landscape

By Paul Taylor-McCartney

Cornwall Uncharted began with a walk. I was looking across the water towards Godrevy Lighthouse, thinking about Virginia Woolf and the childhood holidays in St Ives that would later help shape her seminal novel To the Lighthouse (1927). That small connection between a physical place, memory and writing prompted a much larger question: what other queer histories might be held in Cornwall’s landscapes, if we knew how – and where – to look? That question eventually became a journey across the county. The book moves through towns, artistic colonies and coastal retreats, lighthouses and castles, rural hinterlands, private houses, prisons and contemporary Pride routes. Along the way, it encounters writers and artists, performers and campaigners, soldiers and people whose lives survive only fleetingly in institutional records. At its heart are three interconnected themes – concealment, culture and creativity – and the ways in which they have been shaped by Cornwall itself.

One of the challenges of writing queer history is that the archive rarely gives you everything you want. For much of the period covered by Cornwall Uncharted, openness about same-sex desire or gender nonconformity could carry profound personal, social and legal consequences. Letters might be coded. Newspapers relied on euphemism. Court and prison records could reduce complicated human lives to an offence, a sentence and a date. Silence, therefore, becomes part of the evidence. While researching the book, I became interested not simply in what the archive said, but in what might exist around its edges: the gaps between official words, the routes people took, the houses they chose, the rooms in which they met and the landscapes that allowed them to appear or disappear. This is why place became so important to the project. Cornwall is not simply a picturesque backdrop to these histories. Its coves, moors, lanes, harbours, towns and buildings actively shape them. A secluded house can provide refuge. A winding lane can offer privacy. A coastal community can give someone enough distance from the expectations of elsewhere to experiment with how they live, work or love. But the same landscape can also be watched, mapped and policed. That tension runs throughout the book. In Chapter Five, for example, I place the Cornwall of Daphne du Maurier – its creeks, lanes, boathouses, hidden approaches and private houses – alongside the records of Bodmin Gaol. The comparison produced what I came to think of as a kind of double geography: in fiction, a lane or rented room might provide secrecy and refuge; in official records, those same kinds of spaces could become evidence, a "scene" or a "place of offence." Nowhere did the relationship between landscape, concealment and punishment feel sharper to me than at Bodmin Gaol. In this chapter I examine cases including those of Sergeant Ernest Oke and Private William Davey, whose lives entered the historical record through prosecution and punishment. Their story sits alongside du Maurier’s very different experience of secrecy, privacy and controlled visibility. The intention was not to suggest equivalence between those lives, but to ask what different kinds of concealment cost – and what happens when concealment succeeds or fails.

Throughout Cornwall Uncharted, I include short sections called "A Traveller’s Reflections." These were an opportunity to return to the places themselves. I wanted to acknowledge that researching history can also be a physical and emotional experience: walking the same streets, standing beside a harbour, climbing a castle staircase, entering a prison cell or simply feeling the weather change around a landscape you have spent months encountering through documents. At Bodmin Gaol, the historical material suddenly acquired weight. The names in court calendars were no longer simply entries on a page. The building made questions of confinement, visibility and memory difficult to hold at an academic distance. 

The extract below comes from the Traveller’s Reflection that closes that part of Chapter Five.

From Cornwall Uncharted
Here, I reflected on the case of Oke and Davey and tried to set it at a scale I could hold. Two kits packed in haste. Pay stopped. A letter home, delayed or never sent. A newspaper notice that reduced their actions to a phrase like "improper conduct," and two families left to read between the lines. The prison then fixed these lives in record and stone. It named the offence, measured the time, closed the door on both men.

Yet du Maurier’s life sits alongside this image, offering another kind of confinement: one in which she is not locked up, yet her letters and houses show a careful management of movement, disclosure and risk. Menabilly was then, and is to this day, kept closed to visitors and screened from prying eyes. Desire was routed through correspondence, via friendships that must be framed as safe, through journeys that began and ended elsewhere.

During our visit to the gaol, the site choreographed attention differently. Entry to "The Dark Walk" was timed, then we were released into the museum. The past was not softened so much as held at a distance that allowed looking without breaking. For du Maurier, distance likely worked in a similar way. It became a tool for survival, a way to live with what cannot be named openly.

On our way out, I glanced up at the hotel wing: new glass inside old stone, warm light behind a wall once built to contain and punish. Luxury suites where cells had once stood. Soft furnishings where bodies were counted and kept. The conversion was clever, even aesthetically pleasing, but it left a slightly bitter aftertaste. To be clear: I’m glad people come to visit and take the tour – school groups, couples, families and individuals – who wish to engage with local history, even where opulence blurs the edges between past and present. But if there was a promise worth keeping there, it was this: tell the hard parts in daylight, keep the iron in view and do all in my power not to let the triple-glazed frontages ever erase the voices of the past.

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. 

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.

Cathi Rae, "Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet"

Congratulations to UoL MA and PhD graduate, Cathi Rae, whose new poetry collection has been just been published!

Cathi Rae is a poet, spoken word artist, teacher of creative writing and anti-ageist activist. She has performed throughout the UK and has been described as a "spoken word icon" by Joelle Taylor. Cathi has an MA in Creative Writing and a practice led / creative PhD - both awarded at the University of Leicester. Her new collection is Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet (Coalville CAN Community Publishing, 2026). 

About Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet, by Cathi Rae
Nick Everett writes: "This collection explores the painful but important subject of male suicide in a series of eloquent and sensitive poems, each informed by a true story. Drawing only on information publicly available on social media, these are poems of respectful distance as well as of imaginative sympathy; and they bear moving testimony not only to the distinctive of each commemorated individual but also to the tragically powerful social forces that lead men to suffer in silence rather than share their feelings."  

25% of proceeds from the book will be donated to @andysmanclub - a UK based grassroots charity supporting men's mental health. You can read more about Cathi's work on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet

Tiger Feet

There’s a photo of you   a snapshot    snap-shot

in a kitchen full of the clutter of life with children

a jumble of laundry 

leaning into the door of the washing machine

an endless cycle of

clean and worn and dirty

and is this how you came to feel

worn out    and    dirty

but       there’s this picture

taken for no special reason

except that someone said    smile

and so you did

can of beer 

comfortable in your fist     familiar

I can tell

and you should be wearing Riggers     

or Docks   or even battered baseball boots

smeared with plaster stains and paint

work wear     work-worn    

instead     you’re wearing tiger slippers

you’re wearing tiger feet 

daily everyday wear

seen better days

your suicide almost unnoticed

no social media Greek chorus grief

seven people noticed that you were gone

worn out    and dirty

endless cycle     ceased

and I wonder 

what happened to your tiger feet.

Club 18 to 35

Planning a road trip with a mate    so off his head on pills 

he’s already seeing double before you’ve even left the car park

tyres with tread so thin that only belief 

keeps traction on the road

and a brake light that flickers

On

Off

On 

Off

don’t think about it

pump up the volume

bang out a rhythm on your steering wheel

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

or on an off-the-books 

and under the radar building site

you stand on scaffolding

railing at the skies

sans hard hat of course

because you’re hard enough

“Come on God - do you want some?”

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

  

be a squaddie

in an army    any army

in a desert    far from home

where the red dust road goes on forever

dropped into a landscape you can’t read 

not fluent in foreign

scarcely fluent in your mother tongue 

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

be a superhero 

on a media friendly tower

acrid smell of sweat and fear

homemade banner     Rights for absent fathers

the S scrunched up too small

looked so much easier when you planned it on the web

this is still safer than being a boy aged 18 to 35

 

blamed for every act of violence

held responsible    even when you weren’t

finally formulated this efficient use 

of guns and ropes and pills

rubber tubing snaking from exhausts to driver’s seat

this tidying up of all loose ends

 

finally in touch with your feelings

too late

 

when a room’s on fire 

sometimes a leap into nothing

feels the safest thing.

Laura Besley, "sum of her PARTS"

Congratulations to Laura Besley, University of Leicester PhD student and MA Creative Writing graduate, whose new collection, sum of her PARTS, has just been published by V. Press!

Laura Besley (she/her) is the author of Sum of her PARTS, (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred – shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards – and The Almost Mothers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and runs The NIFTY Book Club - a monthly online book club wherein participants read & discuss novellas-in-flash. Currently, she is a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. Her website is here.    

About sum of her PARTS, by Laura Besley
sum of her PARTS is a collection of 30 micro pieces, each exactly 50 words with a one-word title. They explore female body parts and how they are used and abused by those around them, as well as celebrated.  

You can read more about sum of her PARTS on the publisher's website here. You can read a review of the collection on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read two sample pieces from the collection. 

From sum of her PARTS

solitary

most days
I like
living alone, 
no one 
to moan
about my
lack of 
culinary skills
or clothes
strewn around; 
only when 
a robin - 
breast aglow - 
frolics in 
a birdbath
or I
almost choke
on a 
piece of 
molten cheese
on toast
do I 
regret certain 
decisions made
long ago.

bold

It's an hour before sunrise when I wake and discover I've turned into a trombone, my body shiny-sleek. I try out my new mouthpiece, a short shy toot at first. Subsequent blows grow in length and volume until I am blaring, brass-band loud. This is my voice. Hear me. Listen. 

Run Your Tongue: Spoken Word Night

By Rob Reeves

My friend Bethany Patience started Run Your Tongue in 2012 in Kettering, but it was rather short-lived after we both moved away. I then spent six months in Paris, where I began performing at a spoken word night. When I returned home, I missed performing regularly and decided to start RYT back up in Kettering, following a similar format to the night in France. We moved to the Three Cocks Inn, which was home to us for over five years. We had some great nights there with headliners such as Atilla the Stockbroker, Jess Green and Jonah Matranga.  

During the lockdowns of 2020, I began to hold Run Your Tongue online, which allowed me to connect with poets from all over the world. When we were able to have live events again, I asked Rosa Fernandez to become my co-host, and we moved to an art gallery in Leicester for a year before settling at our current home at Watson’s Cocktail Bar on Granby Street, Leicester. We’ve welcomed a couple of poets we met during the online Zoom days to headline in real life: Jeff Cottrill all the way from Canada and Clive Oseman all the way from Swindon.

The Leicester poetry scene is really thriving, and there are some great other nights, each with its own flavour. Word! is the most well-known and longest-running, Some-Antics is a really fun and popular night, and Get Mouthy is a great new night at the Big Difference. In fact, last month, Word! invited a host from each of the other nights to headline at their event. The whole scene is really supportive and collaborative. We try to make sure our events don’t clash, and we always try to support each other’s events when we can.  

We try to make RYT welcoming and don’t take ourselves too seriously, which I hope helps people feel at ease. I know how hard it is to get up and perform – I used to be absolutely terrified of public speaking and would avoid it at all costs, so I know that just getting up on stage is a win. I always say that anything goes at our events as long as it involves words. While most performers read and perform poetry, we also welcome comedians, singer-songwriters and storytellers. It’s a great place to try out new material to a welcoming crowd.

I always wanted to keep RYT accessible to all, so it’s always been pay-as-you-feel. However, we still believe in paying our headliners, especially if they have come from further afield. Everything we take on the door goes to them, and we also hold the world-famous Rob’s Raffle in the hope of raising a little more. Sometimes it’s difficult to balance paying our headliners with making the night accessible to everyone, but we somehow have made it work for over a decade.

Our events are usually on the first Thursday of the month, but we are holding them bi-monthly until the end of the year. We have an extra event in October with Cathi Rae, and there might even be a special event in the summer.  

The night has taken many forms over the years in various venues, and even when it takes a break for a while, it always returns. I’m really proud of the night, and I know that as long as people keep coming down, I’ll keep putting it on.   

If you’d like to stay updated with events, please follow our Instagram and Facebook pages. Our next event is with Ciarán Hodgers on Thursday, July 4th. 

About the author
Rob Reeves is a poet and musician based in Leicester. Rob started writing poetry in 2012 while taking his MA in English at the University of Leicester, where he is now studying for his PhD in Creative Writing.

Laurie Cusack, "The Mad Road"

Congratulations to Laurie Cusack, University of Leicester PhD Creative Writing graduate, whose debut collection of short stories, The Mad Road, has just been published by Roman Books, as part of its Stretto Fiction series!

Laurie Cusack (PhD) hails from Leicester. He studied Creative Writing at Leicester University. He writes from the gut −  The Mad Road is published by Roman Books, and is his debut collection of short stories. The stories were first drafted as part of his PhD thesis at Leicester.

About The Mad Road, by Laurie Cusack

The Mad Road is a collection of short stories that deals with raw Irish experience in a ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ meets Trainspotting sort of fashion. There is a comic-toughness about Cusack’s narratives that keeps you turning the page. They are working class in nature and aren’t for the fainthearted. 

You can read a review of The Mad Road on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From The Mad Road

Usher’s Well

“Do you want the shamrock on the cream, Davey?”

“What?”

“Brewery directive.”

“Just give me the fucking drink, Hughie.”

“We’re like Sainsbury’s now. We have to ask.”

“Brand Ireland, eh?”

“Now you said it.”

It was just the two of them in The Angel. For the last fifteen years, Hughie O’Connor had been the landlord of the Irish pub tucked in the back streets of Hackney. Traditional music often thrived within its walls.

“Was I missed?” Davey Murray whispered, trying to gauge Hughie’s mood.

Hughie gave his old friend an odd look followed by a shrug. He liked order, liked being kept in the loop. He kept a tight rein on things; a no messing policy; barred meant barred. No early-doors; no late ones. But Davey was the exception to his rules. Hughie often wondered why. Maybe it was because they had been on the shovel together during Hughie’s early days in London. Demolition. Dusty and dangerous work. And most of their wages went on drink in and around the pubs of Cricklewood.

“There were a few asking for you, come to think of it.”

Davey hadn’t shown his face for ages. Unusual. Not a sight or a whiff of him. Hughie had scratched his head a good few times during the past few weeks.

“Look… I had to split, alright?”

“Going off grid is a mortal sin, nowadays.” 

“Am I daft or stupid, Hughie?”

“Now − that, might take a long time to answer, Davey.”

“Ruffled a few feathers?”

“You could say that.”

“Who?”

“Your manager − coming in here, making a show, Where’s the fucking bollix?”

“Eejit.”

Davey’s manager, Rory Higgins, was a character who handled Irish, showbands and other novelty acts. The Impresario of Kilburn High Road − that was what they called him. He had the knack for smelling money. He was always bucking the trend. Davey would still be busking tube stations if Higgins hadn’t chanced upon him ...

Tim Hannigan, "The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey"

Congratulations to UoL PhD English and Creative Writing graduate, Tim Hannigan, whose book The Granite Kingdom has recently been published by Head of Zeus!

Tim Hannigan was born and brought up in the far west of Cornwall. After starting his working life as a chef, he eventually made it to the University of Gloucestershire to study Journalism, after which he moved to Indonesia where he began his writing career as a travel journalist. His first book, Murder in the Hindu Kush, was published in 2011, and he subsequently wrote several books on Indonesian history. In 2016 he started work on a critical-creative PhD at the University of Leicester, supported by the Midlands4Cities DTP. This project produced his book The Travel Writing Tribe, published by Hurst in 2021. He lives in the west of Ireland and combines his writing with part-time teaching roles at the Technological University of the Shannon and the University of Hull. His website is here. 

About The Granite Kingdom

From Daphne du Maurier to Doc Martin, and from the romantic melodrama of Poldark to gritty TV depictions of the modern fishing industry, Cornwall is densely laden with images, projections and tropes. But how does all this intersect with the real place, its landscapes, histories, communities and sense of identity? In The Granite Kingdom, Tim Hannigan sets out on a meandering, 300-mile journey to find out, travelling on foot from the banks of the River Tamar to his childhood home near Land’s End. 

Combining travel writing, memoir, history and literary criticism, the book explores the varied landscapes of Britain’s westernmost region and grapples with the complex idea of Cornwall itself – a cosy English seaside destination for some, a fiercely independent Celtic nation for others and one of Britain’s most impoverished post-industrial regions for others still. It considers the way literary narratives from without have sometimes informed identities from within – including the author’s own – and asks awkward questions about what it means to be “Cornish” in the twenty-first century.

Below, you can read an excerpt from The Granite Kingdom.

From The Granite Kingdom, by Tim Hannigan

Chapter One: Bordering

If you stand at the threshold of Number 2 Cyprus Well, you have a choice. It is the middle cottage of three in a little terrace facing a bank of sycamore saplings on a steep lane called Ridgegrove Hill. Above the single ground-floor window, a plaque records that ‘Charles Causley, Poet’ lived here from 1952 to 2003. They might have added the word ‘Cornish’ to the description, for that is the adjective most commonly associated with Causley. And indeed, he lived in Cornwall – right here in Launceston, in fact – not just for fifty-one years, but for almost his whole life. 

But if you stand at the threshold of Cyprus Well and turn left, you can see Devon. 

It shows beyond the point where the lane bends downhill: a gathering groundswell of trees and pasture. From the doorstep of Causley’s cottage, it seems natural to turn that way, to go with the flow. At the bottom of Ridgegrove Hill you’ll meet the little River Kensey. Within a mile, the Kensey will carry you to the Tamar, and the Tamar will bear you away south, between dark woods to the grey docks and end-of-terrace pubs of Plymouth, with the busy waters of the English Channel beyond. But if it’s Cornwall that you want, then you have to turn against gravity, against nature, pull steeply up Ridgegrove Hill then on up Angel Hill to pass, breathless, beneath the fortified arch on Southgate Street. And if it’s a decent prospect to the westward that you’re after, you’ll need to cross to the other side of Launceston and climb the motte of the castle. 

On a midsummer morning, I stood on the pavement outside Number 2 Cyprus Well. It was early, and up the hill Launceston gave off the faint hum of a small town readying itself for the working day. To the east, the valleys were liquid with yellow mist. A few intersecting ridges rose above the flood, trees and hedges in dark profile. But it wasn’t clear to whom they belonged. I glanced left and right, fiddled with the straps of my backpack, looked at the map. Then I turned downhill, into the mist ....