Reflecting on the passing of Athol Fugard

The Guardian recently published Departmental Lecturer Barney Norris’s tribute to the playwright and novelist Athol Fugard, who has died at the age of 92. You can read the full text below:

 

I feel that Athol Fugard and his wife, Paula Fourie, changed my life in the autumn of 2022 when I visited South Africa to spend time with them and their daughter Halle. We were supposed to be working on a book together, and we did; but our time became so much more than that. There were lunches in the house or the restaurant round the corner; walks in the woods; a braai that went on past midnight.

Over coffee in the mornings I’d sit with Athol and we’d use an app on his phone to identify the calls of all the birds in the garden. Then he might tell me a story from his life – the awe he felt when he asked Yvonne Bryceland to smash a chair to bits during rehearsals for Antigone and she proceeded to do so for a full 30 minutes; the journey he made by sea at 18 from Cairo to Japan, when an illiterate Somalian sailor used to watch him every night as he wrote a novel by hand, sitting on a deck hatch; and the way that sailor never spoke to him again when he finished the novel, decided it was terrible, and threw it in the sea.

Just once, he told me the story of a play he was planning. He spoke elegantly, carefully, slightly formally; I hardly dared breathe for fear he’d stop. He and I had shared certain extreme experiences, albeit more than half a century apart, which had been formative for both of us, and I think as a result we bonded quite strongly; over the course of my time with him we both cried together, taking one another’s hands. And all the time he treated me like I was enough. To receive that from someone whose life had been so vast radically altered my perspective.

His partner in creation and fun was Paula, perhaps the most formidably intelligent person I know. The project we were all working on together was, in part, an examination of Athol’s flaws. They were relentlessly clear-eyed and analytical in all they did. But they were also two extremely romantic people, to the point where they’d decided to start a family together. Athol remained a dreamer, full of plans to the end. His most striking quality, though, was his endless gratitude, which I think was nurtured by his many years as a practising Buddhist. He felt very lucky to have lived an extraordinary life.

I think that life contains an urgent lesson for us. His work is a model for how to resist a regime one detests while remaining committed to the country one loves – a pressing question for a great many people today. In his final public appearance, speaking to an online audience convened by the Society of Authors last year, he shared what I thought might be the key tenet of that project: “Anger is a withering emotion. It is better to write out of love.”

 

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Laura Theis publishes new collection with Broken Sleep

Laura Theis - Introduction to Cloud Care

MSt alumna Laura Theis’ new collection Introduction to Cloud Care has just been published by Broken Sleep. The book blends lyrical precision with a deep sense of wonder, crafting poetry that invites readers into a world where the mundane and the magical coexist seamlessly. Her poems explore themes of nature’s quiet power, the enigma of memory, and the complexity of transformation. Often laced with humour and profound tenderness, they evoke both intimacy and expansiveness. With a voice both contemplative and playful, Theis reimagines self-discovery and connection in ways that are unexpectedly illuminating. This collection celebrates the beauty of what is seen and the irresistible allure of what lies hidden.  

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Oxford Alumna Sylee Gore Receives National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced that Oxford alumna and author Sylee Gore is one of 35 writers selected to receive an FY 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000. This year’s fellowships are in poetry and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career development. Fellows are selected through an anonymous review process and are judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. These fellowships are highly competitive, with more than 2,000 eligible applications received for FY 2025.

NEA Director of Literary Arts Amy Stolls said, “The National Endowment for the Arts’ continued investment in contemporary creative writers preserves, strengthens, and advances our nation’s rich literary traditions. This new group of fellows is the latest in a longstanding legacy of support for poets and prose writers who—through the beauty and power of their words—inspire us, challenge us, and reflect back to us the heart and soul of America’s vast and varied cultural landscape.”

Sylee Gore is a poet who works as a translator for artists and museums. Maximum Summer, her first poetry chapbook, won the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and is forthcoming from Nion Editions. She received her MSt (Distinction) in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.

Since 1967, the NEA has awarded more than 3,700 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $58 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers.

Visit arts.gov to browse bios from the 2025 recipients and past Creative Writing Fellows.

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Camille Ralphs publishes collection with Faber

While the MSt blog was hibernating, MSt tutor and former student Camille Ralphs published her first collection with Faber and Faber – a thrilling landmark in an already prestigious career. Heartfelt congratulations to Camille.

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Recent Alumni Successes

We wanted to celebrate the successes in 2024 of three MSt alumni – Christine Anne Foley, Daisy Johnson and Jingan Young. Christine’s novel Bodies was one of last year’s most acclaimed debuts; Daisy’s latest collection of short stories, The Hotel, further solidified her reputation as one of the leading writers of her generation; and Jingan’s work on the hit ITV series Red Eye saw her recognised as a major screenwriting talent. We’re proud to count them among our former students here on the MSt.

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Barney Norris’s new play opens in London

Departmental Lecturer Barney Norris’s new play, Second Best, inspired by the novel of the same name by David Foenkinos, opens on January 24th at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. Starring Asa Butterfield (Sex Education), the play is directed by Michael Longhurst and designed by Fly Davis, and runs till February 22nd. 

Book your tickets here.

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Bette Adriaanse’s new collaboration with Brian Eno published by Faber

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MSt alumnus Bette Adriaanse has co-written the newly published What Arts Does with Brian Eno.

What Art Does is a chance to understand how art is made by all of us. How it creates communities, opens our worlds, and can transform us.

You can get your copy here.

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The MSt blog is back!

Hi everyone!

After a brief hiatus, the MSt blog is now back with updates from the new course team: Clare, Amal, Kate, Mary Jean and Barney. We’re kicking off with an entry from Mary Jean, our new Departmental Lecturer in Poetry. Here is what they have been reading and researching lately:

What I’m Reading Now

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

This is a mesmerizing novel which meditates on how we might respond to our world’s multiple crises (ecological or otherwise) – can we flee from them as the protagonist in the novel attempts to do by deciding to live in a convent, and is it in fact possible to keep ourselves safe from the uncomfortable truths we’d rather not look in the eye? The novel asks difficult questions about forgiveness, guilt and how one might live ethically. I loved Wood’s writing style; she has the precision of a poet and draws the reader in with sensual, atmospheric scenes.

James by Percival Everett

I found Everett’s retelling of the classic story of Huckleberry Finn deeply moving and eye-opening. Language is foregrounded in this novel: it becomes a tool for camouflage for slaves who need to appear as if they can’t read or speak eloquently to satisfy the twisted egos and expectations of their white slave owners. I also found the complex friendship between James and Huck to be honest and sincere, and it is ultimately their relationship which constitutes the beating heart of this novel. This is a book which will stay with me for a very long time.

Current Projects / Research

I am researching what ‘queer reading’ means in preparation for the 2025 LGBT+ History Month lecture which I will be giving next year at Oxford. I’ve been excited about a forthcoming book titled The Edinburgh Companion to Queer Reading (2024) and have been returning to the writings of Sara Ahmed for inspiration, particularly Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006). I am also working on an essay for a series in Poetry Magazine called ‘Hard Feelings’, having chosen ‘anger’ as the feeling I’d like to focus on. This is proving to be a hard essay to write indeed, but it has also been a nice excuse for me to return to interesting work by D.W. Winnicott, Alison Bechdel and Darian Leader which are enabling me to think through familiar concepts in a different light.

 

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MSt alum Bette Adriaanse’s new novel, What’s Mine, is coming out with US publisher Unnamed Press this August.

MSt alum Bette Adriaanse’s new novel, What’s Mine, is coming out with US publisher Unnamed Press this August.

 

There will be several launch events, as follows:

AUGUST 15, 6PM UK time, ONLINE: Bette joins Caoilinn in Conversation for Chicago bookstore Exile in Bookville.

Details: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/caoilinn-in-conversation-with-bette-adriaanse-tickets-686659987507?aff=oddtdtcreator

AUGUST 16, 7PM, LOS ANGELES, CA: North Fig Books with Gallagher Lawson.

Details: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/?page=1

AUGUST 22, 7PM, SAN FRANCISCO, CA: The Interval at Long Now Foundation with Chelsea T. Hicks, Brian Eno, Aqui Thami and Margaret Levi.

Details: https://longnow.org/ideas/radical-sharing/

AUGUST 25, SAN FRANCISCO, CA: The Internet Archive.

Details: find details on www.betteadriaanse.nl soon

 

“WHAT’S MINE is a surprising and deep work with a persistent quiet momentum carrying the reader back-and-forth in time and space across the slivers of four interlocking lives. It is totally engaging.”

—BRIAN ENO

 

“Bette Adriaanse is becoming a major literary novelist in the best European tradition. She has the down-and-out life experiences of the early Orwell, the desperate humor of Flann O’Brien, the prose immediacy of Beckett, and the avalanche of bureaucracy of Kafka. WHAT’S MINE is a stellar achievement of depicting the absurdist brutality of contemporary urban capitalism where nothing but narcissism and arbitrary outcomes rule.”

—ALAN N SHAPIRO

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MSt alumnus Martin Jago’s poetry collection, Photofit, is published in the UK today.

MSt alumnus Martin Jago’s poetry collection, Photofit, is published in the UK today. More information about the book is available here: http://www.pindroppress.com/books/Photofit.html

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