Peter Davidson, "Arctic Elegies"

Peter Davidson was born in Scotland, brought up there and in southern Spain, and educated at the Universities of Cambridge and York. He has taught at many Universities in Britain and on the continent, and is now Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, University of Oxford. He published one verse collection with Carcanet in 2008, The Palace of Oblivion. He has published a number of books of literary non-fiction, The Idea of North (Reaktion) in 2005, Distance and Memory (Carcanet) in 2013, The Last of the Light: About Twilight (Reaktion) in 2015 and, last year The Lighted Window, Evening Walks Remembered (Bodleian Editions). His second verse collection, Arctic Elegies, will be published by Carcanet in November.

 

About Arctic Elegies, by Peter Davidson

This book is shaped around two long elegies, as the title suggests: one is for the Franklin expedition of the early nineteenth century, lost in the arctic with no survivors. The other is a complex, neo-baroque memorial for a dead, cosmopolitan friend, a fantasist who lived a number of secret lives. Much of the collection is about places, regrets and memories – travels in cold upland Britain and European backwaters, traces of the past, remote landscapes, the end of summer. The past is evoked by translations and imitations of Rilke and the Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff. Elsewhere there are several evocations of the half-forgotten injustices of British history.

In spite of its often-difficult subject matter, the ultimate tone of the book is serene and accepting, especially in the sequence of spiritual poems and songs which bring the collection to a close. These are contemplations of light and landscape, of operations of grace, of reconciliation, purpose and hope, of the wonderful unexpectedly manifested in the quotidian. In his poetry of regret, Davidson offers an oblique poetry of consolation.

You can see more details about Arctic Elegies on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read three poems from the collection. 

From Arctic Elegies

Jacobite Song

The falcon flown, far in the starving air
So many lost, this long, half-secret war.
 
The regiments like snow all overborne
The boat rowed far from the cold shore, long gone.
 
O blackbird taken in the fowler’s snare
He is now far who will return no more.
 
The burn is frozen and the bird is flown
The rose is withered and the tower is down.


Snow, falcon, blackbird, water, rose and tower:
Faded, flown, taken, frozen, fallen, gone.


from Arctic Elegy

Cold England mourns in fog and fallen leaves
November twilight drowns bare avenues;
And all my life is evening since you are gone –
Rain in the dark, my long desolation.
 
O weeping England is a house of ghosts:
Voices at nightfall, whispers amongst dry leaves,
Shadows of young men lost amongst rocks and snows.
 
I am worse than a widow, I who can never marry –
Because you are not quite dead, I can never live:
So I must mourn through the stone rooms alone,
Embrace the frozen air that is all that can join us now.


Father Willcock’s Evening Hymn
 
Unfold your kingdoms in the western sky,
Your transient citadels of ash and rose;
Disclose no more,
Your chain of mercies which has shaped our day.
 
Enfold us in the shadows of your hours,
Within your counterpoints of fading light;
Compose our night
All vast and far in consonance of stars.
 
That I with all below may raise my heart;
More fortunate than I can hope or know,
If so I may
In your great consort bear but the lowest part.

Shauna Strathmann, Two Poems

Congratulations to Shauna Strathmann, winner of this year's G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize! Below, you can read about Shauna and her two winning poems. Congratulations too to Sara Waheed, who was awarded an "honourable mention" for her poetry. 

By Shauna Strathmann 

Hi! I'm Shauna, and I'm studying second-year English with Creative Writing. I enjoy language learning, overanalysing low budget children's musical movies, and playing the "I'm foreign" card when I mispronounce an English word, despite living here for 19 years.

The idea for the poem "BE7049" came about when we considered in a seminar how much poetry there is to be found in mundane places, and mundane forms. I've revisited Germany many times since moving away, and therefore seen the airport experience through ever-ageing eyes. I wanted to retain the child-like wonder within the constraints of an itinerary format; no matter how long you wait at baggage claim, keep the romance of the journey within you!

The poem "Kinderszenen" was inspired by my love for Gothic imagery, as well as Mario Benedetti's poem "Luna Congelada," which expresses that "One can sometimes understand love" through difficult "solitude." I related this to the difficulty of recognising yourself as your parents' child even when you couldn't feel more cut off from them. I picked a German title in part to contrast with my other poem; many people have a very complex relationship with where they're from originally, and while it's fun to romanticise some aspects, it's equally interesting to see how home can feel unsafe too.

BE7049
                                                                                                From: 
                                                                                                Birmingham
                                                                                                To: 
                                                                                                Düsseldorf International
                                                                                                Seat: 21D
                                                                                                Boarding Time: 18:00
                                                                                                Arrival: 20:40

20:40          I am home.

                   In the shuffling grumbling herd,
                   Onto the shuttle bus -

20:55          The carousel takes cheetahs;
                   And leopards;
                   And zebras;
                   I chase my precious Rhinozeros in an urban safari

21:15          announcements, Ankundingungen, Passkontrolle, passport control, 
                   The tannoy sings in the tongues of the continent, 
                   And I skip through the signed labyrinth

22:00          At the edge of a star-strewn tunnel
                   A sweet shop end-stopping the universe;
                   Language is reborn, Alles ist neu
                   Packaging glimmers, Eistee sparkles
                   Kaffee und Schokolade mit Erdbeeren
                   My breath catches as I say goodbye
                   To the lady with a shiny pin and glittering smile
                   Schönes Wochenende!

22:15          I trip over my suitcase
                   Out the spinning door
                   Take a gulp of this cosmos
                   Ich bin Zuhause.

Kinderszenen 

a changeling snuck in the night
key left in the door
bumped my knees coming through the back, using kitchen light
a purse of the lips and that tinkle – my mind prepares for indeterminate war
swathed in a stench i was accustomed to
if their hair looked like mine i would cleave it
gouge out from my sockets shards of green
until it no longer looked like they made me 
– the other one is the new one
but i have been bruised for so long; i am unacquainted with their love
poisoned by my jamais vu i must remember:
i am of them, and of them too. 
so if both packed their bags at one time or another
which was the lodger, and which was my mother?

Amanda Huggins, "An Unfamiliar Landscape"

 

Amanda Huggins is the author of All Our Squandered Beauty and Crossing the Lines – both of which won a Saboteur Award for Best Novella – as well as four collections of short stories and a poetry chapbook. Amanda's fiction and travel writing have appeared in publications such as Mslexia, Popshot, Tokyo Weekender, The Telegraph, Traveller, Wanderlust and the Guardian. Three of her flash fiction stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio.

She has won numerous awards, including the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award, the H. E. Bates Short Story Prize and the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer of the Year. She was a runner-up in the Costa Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Prize, The Alpine Fellowship Award and many others. 

Amanda lives in Yorkshire and works as an editor and publishing assistant. Her first full-length poetry collection will be published by Victorina Press in 2023.

About An Unfamiliar Landscape

Stories from the city, the sea, the forest; stories from places where everything is not always as it first appears … 

From a rain-soaked Berlin to a neon-lit Tokyo, the midwest of North America to the Parisian backstreets, a suburban London kitchen to a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, wherever these characters are travelling from or to, they are all navigating unfamiliar ground in search of answers.

In ‘The Names of the Missing,’ Kara walks the streets of Berlin, photographing the homeless and the displaced while looking for her own missing boys. Sam and Isla’s familiar world is irrevocably altered ‘In the Time It Takes to Make a Risotto,’ and in ‘Waiting to Fall’ Gina is unsettled by the wild landscape when she stays at remote Ragwood Hall. In ‘Something in the Night,’ an urban forest plays tricks on Anna’s perception of reality, and in the title story, Sophia moves through Tokyo almost unseen; simultaneously freed and trapped by her apparent invisibility. 

These are stories of the yearning to belong and the urge to escape; tales of grief and alienation, loss and betrayal, love and truth, change and hope.

You can read more about An Unfamiliar Landscape on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories, 'Aleksandr.' 

From An Unfamiliar Landscape, by Amanda Huggins

Aleksandr

I watch Alex through the kitchen window. He turns his collar up against the salt-licked wind, walks past without looking up, his wool cap pulled low. 

The room is quiet and hollow now he’s gone, the mantel clock widening the emptiness as it strikes the hour. Alex said it would be fine, my mother taking the baby for a few days, he said it would do me good to have a break. But I miss the wee boy already, the straightforward way he fills each day with the mundane, the way he tangles me up in his needs, sweeps me up with his smile. He shows me the best of myself, leaves no room for the dark doubt underneath.

I say my husband’s name out loud. Aleksandr. I try to pronounce it the way his mother does, turning it over in my mouth. The sharp bite of the ‘k’ followed by the soft hiss of the ‘s,’ then the sigh of the fall and the short uptick of the finish. 

Aleksandr, Aleksandr, Aleksandr. 

When I first met him – first craved him – I thrilled to hear his mother say it, pronouncing it in her beautiful Russian accent. The anticipation made me dizzy. I mouthed ‘Aleksandr’ at my reflection in the mirror, conscious of the way the word was formed by my lips, my tongue, my teeth. It raced down my spine in a way I knew it never would again after the first time we made love. His name was a precious gift, a gift I still hold tightly to my ribs, never daring to call him it for fear it will shatter. To everyone other than his mother he is always Alex. 

I stack the bowls and plates on the shelf, turn back to the window, pause for a moment when I see him in the distance outside the herring shed. I clutch the edge of the sink until the door swings shut behind him, then I let go of my breath, watch it curl around the room like sea mist.

If Alex were to get his job back on the trawlers then perhaps he would walk tall again, north wind or no wind, no longer cowed by the weight of his needless guilt. It follows him around the house, a monkey clinging to his back, and when he leaves for work he carries it with him in his knapsack. At night it lies between us in the bed, and he turns away from it, scratches his arms as though he can feel its fingers tapping. 

He says he only wants the best for me, for our baby, and I tell him we already have the best. I chose this life. I always understood it would be hard, realised that new clothes and expensive dinners would be rare. I’d seen the damp patches on the parlour walls, knew I would be dragging buckets of coal from the cellar and struggling to keep the Aga alight, that I would be fighting the rain and the wind to carry washing out to the scullery in the winter. This is exactly the life I expected when I made my choice, and it’s a good life, an honest life, a solid life. 

But this morning I’m temporarily uprooted, drifting, trying to float above the high wall that bricks me in a little further every day. My comforting mantra no longer rings true; I’m unsure that anything can make Alex walk tall again.

Zoë Skoulding, "A Marginal Sea"

Zoë Skoulding is a poet and literary critic interested in translation, sound and ecology. She is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Bangor University. Her previous collections (published by Seren Books) include The Mirror Trade (2004); Remains of a Future City (2008), shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year; The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (2013), shortlisted for Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; and Footnotes to Water (2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and won the Wales Book of the Year Poetry Award 2020. In 2020 she also published The Celestial Set-Up (Oystercatcher) and A Revolutionary Calendar (Shearsman). She received the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2018 for her body of work in poetry. 

About A Marginal Sea, by Zoë Skoulding

A Marginal Sea is written from the vantage point of Ynys Môn/Anglesey, which is both in Wales and in a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean – and makes this position pivotal. Far from being isolated, the island is imagined as a site of archipelagic connection with other places and histories, and of relationships that include but extend beyond the human. Poems explore the possibilities for new forms of encounter with other creatures, from gulls and red squirrels to earthworms, testing the boundaries of sense and song as daily rhythms draw together observer and observed. The spaces of dream and digital technology are interwoven with the everyday, which is never taken for granted. Place and displacement, navigation and lostness are explored through a variety of translation and rewriting techniques that often refuse settled location, but the poems return to the body and senses as a means of gaining knowledge.  

You can see more information about A Marginal Sea on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection. 

From A Marginal Sea

Weather This 

Hello day, I wanted to talk to you about the weather, 

though I never stop talking about it in blood and breath, 

neck muscles, the way my feet slide across the pavement 

or my head drinks up the light. But I only get so far 

and then the horizon’s wandered off again. This body’s 

opening to the pinkish gleam that rises – rose – on the 

outline of a cloud behind black branches and I wanted to 

tell you, day, or weather (surely you’re the same thing), 

how your rain of events, this endless rain keeps the door 

stuck, the hours leaking into air. The rain is what 

I am. But how are you, day, and what season are you 

bringing in searing bird calls, or a wind that unwraps 

the invisible instant, its far-off dust drifting into the edges 

of our speech? The isobars move in. On the underside of 

atmospheric pressure, time spills in a cloud of what might 

never happen, if only it hadn’t already. Good. Morning.

Tania Hershman, "Still Life With Octopus"

 

Tania Hershman, photography by Grace Gelder

Tania Hershman's second poetry collection, Still Life With Octopus, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2022 and her debut hybrid novel, Go On, is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books in Nov 2022. Tania is Arvon's writer-in-residence for Winter 22/23, and is putting together an anthology of prize-winning flash fictions to raise funds for fuel poverty charities. Her poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon's 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book and what if we were all allowed to disappear was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020. Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in Creative Writing inspired by particle physics. Her website is here.  

About Still Life With Octopus

Tania Hershman’s Still Life With Octopus is an exquisitely-attuned second collection, a philosophical and poetic interrogation of the boundaries of animal and human worlds and the intimate nature of time, being and joy. Exploring the slippage between the life of the mind and the life of the body – in particular, those belonging to women – Hershman wonders what might happen if we let go of our preconceptions of both reality and language, taking nothing for granted and starting again from first principles, with fresh eyes.

While trying to fathom our physical and metaphysical existence, Hershman doesn’t ignore the other forms of intelligent life we share our planet with; her octopus is envisioned both as a creature within and alongside us and as a way to consider our place as humans within a greater chain of co-existence. 

You can see further details of Still Life With Octopus on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Still Life With Octopus, by Tania Hershman

Still Life With Octopus (I)

There is an octopus in my chest, trying 

to give my heart to you. She will not listen 

when I say I need it. I have to keep 

prying her from my vena cava, the pulminary 

veins. I ask what makes her think 

you’d want it anyway. She shakes her head, her colour 

shifts to indicate disappointment, hope, 

connection. Finally, I let her take it. Once 

it’s gone, she settles in its place, exactly the right 

cardiac muscle shade. I worry about where my heart 

is now, did it even reach you? Let go, whispers the octopus 

in my chest. These things are not in your control.  

How to Make a Buttonhole Hand Stitch, 3 minutes 15 seconds, Feb 21, 2018

// You only see her hands / She doesn’t speak / doesn’t say / as they all do / Today I’m going to show you how / She sews / for three minutes fifteen seconds / in silence/ But there is noise / Behind her / dogs are barking / children shout / at one point there’s a siren / the sound of drilling / Because you have nothing but her fingers / (nails shaped but not quite clean) / you imagine / Some city in America / (sirens, dogs) / A woman who has told her family / Don’t bother me / I’m filming / And for three minutes fifteen seconds / she unlistens / to the children / dogs / sirens / drill / til she finishes that buttonhole for you //

Peter Thabit Jones, "Under the Raging Moon"

 

Peter Thabit Jones has authored sixteen books. He has participated in festivals and conferences in America and Europe and is an annual writer-in-residence in Big Sur, California. A recipient of many awards, including the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry (The Society of Authors, London) and the Homer: European Medal of Poetry and Art, two of his dramas for the stage have premiered in America. His opera libretti for Luxembourg composer Albena Petrovic Vratchanska have premiered at the Philarmonie Luxembourg, the National Opera House Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, and Theatre National Du Luxembourg.  A book of poems, A Cancer Notebook, is forthcoming. Further information is on his website here.  

Front cover artwork by Swansea artist Jeffrey Phillips

About Under the Raging Moon: One Night with Dylan Thomas in Greenwich Village, New York: A Drama in Four Acts, by Peter Thabit Jones

October, 1953. Dylan Thomas, unwell and harassed by personal problems, is on his fourth and fatal visit to America, organised by John Malcolm Brinnin, Director at the YM & YWHA Poetry Center in New York. 

October 25th. Dylan, accompanied by Liz Reitell, Brinnin’s assistant, with whom he started an affair on his third visit, is in a taxi on the way to Greenwich Village. Since his arrival in the city, she has been trying to keep him away from his ‘hangers-on’ and to focus him on the upcoming two performances of his Under Milk Wood at the Kaufmann Auditorium. Unhappy and upset by his general behaviour, she stops the taxi near her apartment and abandons him to do whatever he pleases.

In this imagined scenario, he stops at some bars where he mainly meets people unknown to him. The final bar is the White Horse Tavern, his favourite drinking place in the Village.

Note: In the early hours of 3rd November, Dylan would leave the Chelsea Hotel and an upset Liz. His last-ever drinking spree would lead to him being rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital on November 5th, where he would go into a coma and die on November 9th. 

This imagined evening with Dylan Thomas, unwell and who becomes somewhat drunk as the hours pass in his visits to four pubs in Greenwich Village, New York, aims to show the man behind the legend when he is among non-literary people: people unknown to him, apart from two bar people and two hangers-on. Always in the back of my mind were some comments by his Swansea friends, such as the poet Vernon Watkins and the painter Alfred Janes, who knew the pre-legend Dylan, that he could be ‘ordinary’ with the right people. I have aimed for that ‘ordinariness,’ the ability to empathise with others, in a genius of a man. 

His time with my chosen characters brings out certain themes: fatherhood, childhood, money, love and death. They were some of the themes that permeated his works and his letters.

You can read more about Under the Raging Moon on the UK publisher's website here and in the US here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of Act Two. 

From Under the Raging Moon

ACT TWO

The stage is lit to show a section of another American bar. AVA, the young barwoman, is behind the counter. Enter DYLAN THOMAS. 

AVA: Mr. Dylan Thomas! (Looking at EZRA LOWELL, who is sitting at a table).  This is Dylan Thomas, a very famous poet. 

DYLAN THOMAS: I’m just posing as Dylan Thomas, my dear.

AVA: Oh, you are a wicked, Mr. Thomas! You don’t fool me!

AVA to EZRA LOWELL: He’s from England.  A very famous—

DYLAN THOMAS: From Wales. I’m Welsh. Welsh as a slice of bara brith from Carmarthen market.

AVA: Oh, I just love it when someone speaks another language! Don’t you, Mr. Lowell?  No friends with you tonight, Mr. Thomas?

DYLAN THOMAS: No.  I’m a dumped poet. Dumped by a female friend who thinks I am not fit to share the Manhattan air with her.

AVA:  Oh, poor Mr. Thomas.  Sit with Mr. Lowell. He’s by himself too.

DYLAN THOMAS (looking at EZRA LOWELL): May I become the second member of your club for lonely men? 

EZRA LOWELL: Take a seat. What you drinking, famous poet?

DYLAN THOMAS: An Old Grandad whisky, Ava.

EZRA LOWELL: Another gin for me.

AVA: Drinks for the lonely men coming up.

DYLAN THOMAS sits at the table. He lights a cigarette.

EZRA LOWELL: I’m Ezra Lowell, company manager of Ezra Lowell Cars Limited.  I have six car showrooms throughout New York and I’m planning to set two up in Boston next year. I own two properties in Greenwich Village, which of course is the more genteel part of Manhattan.  

DYLAN THOMAS: I’m Dylan Thomas, company manager of various poems and stories. I don’t have a car and I don’t own a single property. I live in Laugharne, which is not even shown on a map of Wales.

EZRA LOWELL: I take it sarcasm is part of a poet’s baggage?

DYLAN THOMAS: I prefer to call it the Welsh wit when it comes to words.

EZRA LOWELL: So what do you think of our Manhattan?

DYLAN THOMAS: All is (emphasising) now in this city! It’s gaudy carnival of neon lights calling all to worship mammon. Its canyons of skyscrapers threatening the ceiling of the night. Car horns going into battle with each other. Traffic flooding the avenues and people flooding the sidewalks. It’s as if a dream and nightmare have got into bed together. Is this the madness before the second Fall of mankind?  

EZRA LOWELL: Are you serious? This is the greatest city in the greatest country in the world.

DYLAN THOMAS: And money electrifies this buzzing, massive fairground! Ah, the heart is a green dollar! Even I, an overweight and word-burdened poet, have a beer-cleansed belly of hunger for it. The need for money sings among the rhyming lines in my mind. Money for Caitlin, oh my lioness of a wife. Money for our little litter of children, and money for me as poor as a public bar mouse.

Why have I come once more to this insomniac city, to parade my roar of a voice in the judging-eared halls, to be tortured by the educated questions of the sweet salaried academics? Ah, a pocket’s bulge of tempting dollars as green as envy!

EZRA LOWELL: Very fancy words, as expected from the likes of you.

AVA places their drinks on the table.

AVA: Enjoy!

EZRA LOWELL: Wouldn’t a proper job feed and clothe, what did you say, your litter of children?

DYLAN THOMAS: Each man and woman contributes to this blessed planet. If you need an electrician, a poet is of no use to you. If you need a poem, an electrician is of no use to you.  We all serve a purpose. You sell cars. I sell poems and stories, dear man.

EZRA LOWELL: You can’t be serious in comparing your contribution to society to that of a nine to five worker? (He downs a mouthful of his drink).

Ava, would you rather go out with an electrician with a regular salary and a Chevrolet or an impoverished poet?

AVA: Most gals I know like a guy with a load of dollar notes, but I like the thought of a poet writing love poems all about me, and whispering romantic words in my ear!  (She laughs loudly). Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (She laughs again). We did that one in college!

Good News for the Start of the Autumn Term

Since our Summer News post in July, which you can read here, a lot has happened, so I thought I'd update you on some recent student and graduate successes. It's great to be able to usher in the new academic year with some good news!

Firstly, a remarkable double success: not just one, but two of our graduates, Figen Gungor and Hannah Stevens, were shortlisted for this W&A Working-Class Writers' Prize. Figen was subsequently named as a runner-up. Figen is a graduate of English with Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and Hannah a PhD Creative Writing graduate. Congratulations to both of them!

Congratulations to PhD Creative Writing student Joe Bedford, who recently won the national Leicester Writes Short Story Prize 2022 with his story "On Tuesdays I Clean the House." You can see details here. Incidentally, Joe is the second PhD Creative Writing from Leicester to have won the competition in recent years. In 2020, now-PhD graduate Dan Powell won the competition - see here. 

Congratulations to Paul Taylor-McCartney, who not only recently finished his PhD in Creative Writing, but has now published his debut children's novel, Sisters of the Pentacle. You can read more about it here. 

Congratulations to PhD alumna Anita Sivakumaran whose new novel, Black Rain - set mostly in Leicester - will be published by Little Brown in November 2022. You can read about her earlier novel, Cold Sun, on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Lisa Williams, who has had two 100-word short stories, "Missing Dad" and "Gambling Lives," published by Friday Flash Fiction here and here. 

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate Sally Shaw, whose story "A Deckchair on Southport Beach" has been published by Ink Pantry here. 

Congratulations again to PhD Creative Writing graduate Hannah Stevens, whose story "Something You Can Feel in Your Teeth" is published by Porridge Magazine here. 

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing graduate, and soon-to-be PhD Creative Writing student Kathy Hoyle, on the publication of her short story "Shh, Bairn" in The Forge Literary Magazine here. 

Congratulations to Sara Waheed, winner of this year's John Coleman Prize, for highest mark in an undergraduate Creative Writing assignment, and Shauna Strathmann, for winning this year's G S Fraser Poetry Prize. 

Everybody's Reviewing, in conjunction with the Centre for New Writing, is currently running a series of author interviews, in which PhD Creative Writing students interview well-known authors about their research and writing process. The first three interviews in the series are now published on Everybody's Reviewing. You can read PhD Creative Writing student Joe Bedford's interview with Melissa Harrison here, Mathew Lopez-Bland's interview with Susan Napier here, and Rob Reeves's interview with Kevin Fegan here. Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved! It's shaping up to be a really great series. 

And finally congratulations to Alex Lee, Danny Stringer and Miriam Waters, who wrote the the winning, runner-up and highly commended "Mrs. Edna Welthorpe" letters for this year's Joe Orton Creative Writing Competition, run by the University of Leicester. You can see details here. 

Best wishes to everyone for the new academic year!