Creative Empathy: An Evening with Rob Gee and Jonathan Taylor

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

Join the Centre for New Writing, the Empathic Healthcare Society, and the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare for a special evening celebrating the power of creative writing to foster empathy, understanding and connection. Award-winning poet, performer and storyteller Rob Gee and author Jonathan Taylor will appear in conversation to explore the relationship between writing and empathy. The event is free and open to all. It takes place on Thursday 29 October, 6-pm, and you can register for tickets here. 

The event celebrates the Anthony Locke Empathic Healthcare Prizes for Creative Writing, recognising outstanding writing that engages with themes of compassion, understanding, care and human experience. Following a talk by Rob and Jonathan, there will be a reading of some of the brilliant entries to the competition.

Whether you are a creative writer, healthcare professional, student, or reader, you’re welcome to this celebration of the role of creativity in helping us understand one another.

About the Speakers
Rob Gee is a comic, poet, and ex- mental health nurse with over a decade of clinical experience. He has won over twenty awards for his solo shows and triumphed in major poetry slams, including the Edinburgh Slam and BBC Two's Why Poetry Matters Slam. He has performed over 3,000 shows globally, including at more than 100 international fringe festivals. He serves as patron for the Leicestershire Action for Mental Health Project (LAMP) and spent 12 years as the lead artist for Comedy Asylum, which runs comedy workshops and shows for individuals with severe mental illness. Shows include Forget Me Not: The Alzheimer's Whodunnit and AWOL: Two old men escape from a care home and go to a metal festival. He has published numerous books of poetry and edited anthologies celebrating the power of poetry for wellbeing.

Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor and critic. He is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and author of prize-winning novels, short story collections, and memoirs, including the beautifully empathic works of life-writing Take Me Home: Parkinson’s, My Father, Myself (Granta Books, 2007) and A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024).

About the Prizes
In summer 2026 we ran a creative writing competition open to all medical and healthcare students at the University of Leicester, with prizes kindly sponsored by Anthony Locke, and the Centre for New Writing. The prize was judged by a committee including students from the Empathic Healthcare Society, Dr Jonathan Taylor, Dr Andy Ward, Dr Felicity James and Dr Rachel Winter.

The range of entries – moving, tender and empathic – showed how talented and expressive our students are. The evening will include a presentation of prize certificates, but all the entries deserve to be celebrated: the talk will be followed by a reading of a sample of the great short prose pieces and poems entered.

The event forms part of our larger conversation around the literary arts and healthcare, funded by the AHRC as part of the Empathy, Difficulty, Difference: Creative Curiosity in Practice project.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Rough Draft in Leicester

Here (below) is information from the organisers of "Rough Draft," a bi-monthly event for writers held in Leicester. MA Creative Writing student Anna Walsh says of the event: "I enjoy trying out my new writing at Rough Draft. It's such a supportive setting for connecting with other Creatives and getting feedback on developing ideas."

We love new stuff. We can’t get enough of it. From gut-wrenching theatre to side-splitting comedy, melodic music to punchy poetry, and all those arty bits in between, we love seeing all the new and exciting things that fall out of those creative brains. But more often than not, the first stumbling block when making something new is getting it seen, finding out if it works, and finding people to help you make it.

Enter Rough Draft. Put together by a handful of Leicester creatives, Rough Draft is a platform for artists to do just that.

Once every two months we hold our scratch nights, and programme three artists who each get fifteen minutes to share their work, be that script in hand or something more polished. We then chat with the audience, ask questions, get answers (or we have paper forms too).

Rough Draft is free to attend and open to all. If you would like to be involved, come along to one of the nights and chat to our team, or pop us an email at roughdraft.le@gmail.com

We'll be changing things up in 2025 by hosting our nights every other month! We'll be kicking off in January with our Leicester Comedy Festival Special and then we'll be back with you in March - which is already fully booked by the way. 

If you're working on anything new and would like constructive feedback from a supportive audience of peers, we next have availability at our May night - So get in touch to book your spot! Our upcoming nights are January 28th, March 25th, May 27th 2025. 

Find out more on our Facebook page here. 

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.

Invitation to a Joint Book Launch!

You are cordially invited to the book launch on Tuesday 11 May 2021, 7-8pm, for Hannah Stevens and Alexandros Plasatis. The event is free and open to all.

Hannah Stevens took her PhD in Creative Writing at Leicester University, and also taught undergraduates at the university. She will be launching her book of short stories, In Their Absence (Roman Books, 2021). The book includes stories first written during her PhD, and is published by Roman Books as part of their series Stretto Fiction, edited by Jonathan Taylor. You can see more details about Hannah's work and In Their Absence on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Alexandros Plasatis worked in the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester. He will be launching his novel-in-stories, Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), which was also first drafted during his PhD in Creative Writing, at De Montfort University. You can read more about Alex's work and Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here.

The book launch will take place via Zoom and hosted by Jonathan Taylor. Further details and tickets are available here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Invitation to Joint Book Launch

You are cordially invited to a joint book launch on Wednesday 17 October 2018, from 6.30pm at the Exchange Bar in Leicester, LE1 1RD. Everyone is welcome, and the event is free. 

The event will celebrate the launch of two new books, both published this year by Shoestring Press, and both by lecturers at the University of Leicester - Sue Dymoke and Jonathan Taylor. 

What They Left Behind is Sue Dymoke’s third Shoestring Press collection after Moon at the Park and Ride (2012) and The New Girls – New and Selected Poems (2004). Sue is a Reader in Education at the University of Leicester. 

Jonathan Taylor's Cassandra Complex is a collection of poems, found poems, found translations, mis-translations, prophecies, pseudo-prophecies, apocalyptic visions and moments of retroactive clairvoyance. Jonathan directs the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.

If you are on Facebook, you can see the Facebook event here. If you would like further details about the event, please email Jonathan at the address shown on the poster above.

Hope to see you there!

Reading in Loughborough Library

All welcome! At Loughborough Library, 7pm Tuesday 25 April: Four Authors, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Maria Taylor and myself, will be reading from and talking about their novels and poetry. Booking details are on the poster, and there's a Facebook event here.