Welcome to Oxford University’s MSt in Creative Writing blog, a resource for Oxford events, calls for submission, competitions, news and interviews where you can keep in touch with our community of tutors and alumni.
The Choice is part of a collaboration between Vocal Futures and The English Concert to showcase Handel in a modern frame.
Two ancient goddesses compete over the future of a young, privileged soldier: MSt alumna Jennifer Thorp wrote the libretto for the modern parts, and Toby Young composed the music.
On the 14th and 15th of October at Britten Theatre in London.
“Writing Scandalously: Serious Sex Scenes for the Non-Genre Writer”
with Marti Leimbach
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Marti Leimbach is the author of seven novels, including New York Times bestseller Dying Young and Daniel Isn’t Talking. Widely translated, and published worldwide, Marti is a core course tutor at Oxford University’s Creative Writing Program, where she teaches on the Master’s program. Her upcoming novel, Age Of Consent, will be published in 2016 by Penguin Random House in the USA and Fourth Estate in the UK.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
Writing the Cold War
with Nigel Cliff
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Nigel Cliff is the author of The Shakespeare Riots (Random House, 2007), which was shortlisted for the U.S. National Award for Arts Writing, and was a Washington Post Book of the Year. His second book, The Last Crusade (Harper, 2011), was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and has been widely translated. His most recent book is a new translation and edition of Marco Polo’s Travels for Penguin Classics (2014). He is currently working on a nonfiction book for Harper set during the Cold War. He has also written screenplays and reviews books for the New York Times.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
Dr Clare Morgan: (LMH and Kellogg College), novelist, literary critic and Director of the MSt in Creative Writing
Dr Angus Philips: (Exeter), author of The Future of the Book in the Digital Age and Director of Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes
Caroline Wood: Agent and Director at the Felicity Bryan literary agency
Juliet Mabey: founder of Oneworld Publications
Venue: Edmond Safra, Said Business School
Date: Saturday 19 September
Timings: 11.45am-1pm Panel discussion and Q&A
Session description:
The gateway to publishing fiction has for centuries been guarded by a relatively small number of editors, publishers and magazine proprietors, leaving first-time writers to navigate the dos and don’ts of submission protocol in order to stand out among an ever-growing crowd. Now, with the emergence of self-publishing and digital platforms as legitimate vehicles for new works, what options are available to emerging writers? In this session, our panel of experts will discuss traditional as well as alternative means of getting published – and the best ways to improve your chances of finding the right publisher for your work.
“Cliché: The Nemesis of Exciting Writing”
with Professor Belinda Jack
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Writers need an acute attentiveness to language when reading, and a self-consciousness when writing, which together foster a creative use of words. It is only an imaginative use of language that allows for new ideas and for a new understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. We need to be linguistically inventive and ingenious if new insights are to be conceived of, and articulated. And we also need to be aware of language that is no longer fit for purpose. We need to do something about words which have lost their vivacity and lounge lazily on the page. The term ‘verbicide’ (the killing of words) emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century it is cliché that needs to be in our sights.
Belinda Jack’s first two books are on francophone writing. She then wrote a biography of George Sand, George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large and a group biography, Beatrice’s Spell. Her most recent book is a history of women’s reading, The Woman Reader, published by Yale University Press. She is a Student (‘Fellow’) and Tutor in French at Christ Church and is currently Gresham Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London. The title of her three-year lecture series is ‘The Mysteries of Reading and Writing. Belinda Jack also writes for a number of periodicals, reviews widely and speaks at literary festivals and on the radio.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
“Narrative and Anti-Narrative in the Short Story and the Novel”
with MSt tutor Alice Jolly
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Alice Jolly has published two novels with Simon and Schuster and four of her plays have been produced by the professional company of the Everyman in Cheltenham. She has been commissioned by Paines Plough and her monologues have been performed at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden. She teaches creative writing on the MSt at Oxford University and is currently crowd funding for a memoir which will be published by Unbound in autumn 2015. Alice won the 2014 V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize awarded by The Royal Society of Literature.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
MSt alumna Susie Campbell’s collection of prose and collage poems will be launched on 26th February 2015, at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford.
Admission is free but a ticket is necessary. Contact events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or collect a free ticket in store.
For more information, visit the Blackwell’s Oxford Events webpage.
“The Medium of Poetry”
with MSt tutor Emma Jones
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary
Emma Jones’ first book, The Striped World, was published by Faber & Faber in 2009, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Queensland Premier’s Award for Best Collection, and the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, among others. She has written the libretto for City Songs, a contemporary oratorio, with composer Eriks Esenvalds, which premiered at The Round House in London with vocalist Imogen Heap. Emma has held writing fellowships in Cambridge, the Lake District, Rome and Riga, and is at work on a second book. She tutors in poetry on Oxford’s MSt in Creative Writing.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan
MSt tutor Wendy Brandmark’s new novel The Stray American, will be launched in London on Saturday 13 December at 7.30pm
Venue: October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 3AL.
Cost: Free, but book your places with bernadette@hollandparkpress.co.uk.
“The Stray American is set in 2003, and tells the story of Larry Greenberg escapes from his corporate law job in Boston to teach in a seedy American college near London’s Waterloo Station. We follow Larry, a flawed but engaging character, on his journey in search of a soul mate and a sense of purpose.”
“The World in a Grain of Sand”: Writing Shorter and Longer Narrative
Michaelmas Term Week 3
Thursday 28th October 2014
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing
Mawby Room, Kellogg College,62 Banbury Road.
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary.
Elleke Boehmer is a novelist, critic and Professor of English at Oxford University specialising in African and Indian literatures in English. She is the author of four novels, including Screens again the Sky (shortlisted for the David Higham Prize, 1990), Bloodlines (shortlisted for the SANLAM prize, 2000), and Nile Baby (2008). She has published monographs, editions and anthologies, amongst others, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2005) and Stories of Women (2005). Her biography Nelson Mandela (2008) has been widely translated and her edition of Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys was a 2004 bestseller. She is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. In 2014-5, she will serve as a judge for the Man Booker International Prize.
Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan