Welcome to Oxford University’s MSt in Creative Writing blog, a resource for Oxford events, calls for submission, competitions, news, interviews and more.
MSt tutor Marian Womack’s novel The Golden Key has been published by Titan Books. From the release note:
“After the death of Queen Victoria, England heaves with the uncanny. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms.
Helena Walton-Cisneros, known for her ability to find the lost and the displaced, is hired by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens.
But the Fens are an age-old land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. The locals speak of devilmen and catatonic children are found on the Broads. Here, Helena finds what she was sent for, as the Fenland always gives up its secrets, in the end…”
MSt alumna Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s novel The Mercies has been published in the UK & the US. From the UK announcement (Picador):
“The Sunday Times Bestseller ‘A gripping novel . . . Beautiful and chilling’ – Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm of 1617, The Mercies is a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community, and a love that may prove as dangerous as it is powerful.
On
Christmas Eve, 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of
Vardø is thrown into a reckless storm. As Maren Magnusdatter watches,
forty fishermen, including her father and brother, are lost to the waves
– the menfolk of Vardø wiped out in an instant.
Vardø is now a place of women.
Eighteen
months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take
control of a place at the edge of the civilized world, Absalom Cornet
knows what he needs to do to bring the women of Vardø to heel. With him
travels his young wife, Ursa. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa finds
something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees
only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all
costs . . .
BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 2020
A gripping novel inspired by a real-life witch hunt.
Hargrave’s prose is visceral and immersive; the muddy, cold life and
politics of a fishing village leap to vivid life. But her most vital
insights are about the human heart: how terrifyingly quickly prejudices
can turn into murder, and how desperately we need love and courage to
oppose it. Beautiful and chilling
Madeline Miller, author of Circe
This is a powerful story that gathers ever more momentum as it moves towards its conclusion
Sunday Times
A book for our times . . . Millwood Hargrave is a whirlwind, storm-building talent
Daisy Johnson, Man Booker Prize shortlisted author of Everything Under”
MSt tutors Jane Draycott & Jenny Lewis will be reading at Carcanet’s 50 year celebration, Oxford, 20 Feb 2020.
The announcement:
“Thursday 20 Feb 2020, 17:30 to 19:00
Location:T S Eliot Theatre Merton College Oxford OX1 4JD
Description:Celebrate Fifty Years of Carcanet Press publishing some of the very best in contemporary poetry in an evening of readings and discussion Followed by a Drinks Reception at Merton College, Oxford.
This convivial and informal evening hasbeen planned to highlight the poetry and creative practice of prominent poetson the Carcanet list, all of whom have connections to Oxford and the University.
A drinks reception will follow thepresentation, where there will be an opportunity to meet the poets, purchasecopies of recent collections and learn more about the work of Carcanet Press inmaking a major contribution to our cultural life in the UK and beyond.
The evening is hosted by Kirsty Gunn,Visiting Creative Research Fellow, Merton College.
Announcement from the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre and ignition Press:
“The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre is delighted to announce the publication of three new ignitionpress poetry pamphlets:
City Poems by Mia KangHush by Majella KellyHinge by Alycia Pirmohamed We will be launching them next week at the Poetry Cafe in London on Thursday 20 February from 7pm and on Friday 21 February at Waterstones Oxford from 6.30pm. Mia will be appearing via video link, but Alycia and Majella will be there in person! You will also be able to find us at the Poetry Book Fair in London on Saturday 22 February. We’d love to see you at one of these launches! Please sign up for free tickets via Eventbrite here.
You can read samples of their work on the Poetry Centre website and hear them read from their pamphlets here. They will be available to buy online from the Brookes Shop this Friday.
Majella Kelly is an Irish writer from Tuam, Co. Galway who won the 2019 Strokestown International Poetry Competition. Last year she was also shortlisted for the inaugural Brotherton Prize at Leeds University and her poems will be published by Carcanet in a Brotherton anthology. Her poetry and short fiction has been published in such places as The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, Ambit and Best New British & Irish Poets 2017. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.”
MSt alumna Kiran Millwood Hargrave will be in conversation with fellow alumna Daisy Johnson at Blackwells in Oxford, 8th Feb 2020. They will be talking about Kiran’s new novel, The Mercies.
From the announcement:
“‘A gripping novel inspired by a real-life witch hunt . . . Beautiful and chilling’ Madeline Miller, author of Circe
On Christmas Eve, 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a reckless storm. As Maren Magnusdatter watches, forty fishermen, including her father and brother, are lost to the waves, the menfolk of Vardø wiped out in an instant.
Now the women must fend for themselves.
Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take control of a place at the edge of the civilized world, Absalom Cornet knows what he needs to do to bring the women of Vardø to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa finds something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty and terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs.
Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies is a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community, and a love that may prove as dangerous as it is powerful.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist. Her bestselling works for children include The Girl of Ink & Stars, and have won numerous awards including, the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, and the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year, and been shortlisted for prizes such as the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Blue Peter Best Story Award. The Mercies is her first novel for adults. Kiran lives by the river in Oxford, with her husband, artist Tom de Freston, and their rescue cat, Luna.
Daisy Johnson’s debut short-story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. In 2018 she became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with her debut novel Everything Under which was also the Blackwell’s Book of the Year. She is the winner of the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize, the A. M. Heath Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She currently lives in Oxford by the river and once worked as a Bookseller at Blackwell’s.
This is a free event, but please do register if you plan on attending. Please be aware that this event will take place in the Philosophy Department, which is accessible by a small flight of stairs. Seating is unallocated. For more information, please call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.”
MSt director Dr Clare Morgan shared her thoughts on “The Hidden Power of Poetry to Make Better Entrepreneurs” with the Wall Street Journal . The article (paywall) is available here.
MSt tutor James Womack’s translation of Manuel Vilas “Heaven” has been published by Carcanet. He has also written a blog post about it.
From the announcement:
A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death.
Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also resolutely Spanish in how they speak – bluntly, humorously – always alert for the fantastic.
This is the first translation of Vilas’s two major collections Heaven (El cielo, 2000) and Heat (Calor, 2008) into English. Thematically fuelled with alcohol, death and sex, they go off into free-wheeling megalomaniacal flights of fantasy. The translator, James Womack, has won prizes for his versions of Vilas and of the Russian poet Mayakovsky.”
MSt tutor Jane Draycott and MSt alumnus Luke Allen have won second and third TLS Mick Imlah Poetry Prizes, respectively. You can read the poems and about the prize here.
MSt alumnus Arthur Allen’s verse novel The Nurseryman has been published by Kernpunkt Press. From the announcement:
“The Nurseryman is a verse novel told in polyphony as the collected account of a 17th Century voyage to Meta Incognita – the absolutely unknown ice-land at the top of the world. A composite of original sources and collected accounts of medieval voyages, The Nurseryman is a postmodern travel compendium that explores the hidden, magical worlds within our own.”
An extraordinary debut that combines the awed wonder of early seafarers with a freshness and buoyancy that is essentially 21st century. Alternating between the late sixteenth century ‘FRAGMENTARY records of a Roote Gatherer, practiced of alchemical craft & in the spiritual use of fruit trees…’, lyrical meditations on the beauty of nature, and notes on rsome of the marvels encountered during the voyage (such as how female whales are snared by their protectiveness towards their offspring), The Nurseryman takes us on a startlingly original odyssey that is at once an homage to the past as well as being a prescient ‘fable for the present.“ – Jenny Lewis, author of Gilgamesh Retold
For more information, and to order The Nurseryman, visit Kernpunkt Press.
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