Here are our members: NTU staff, graduate students, undergraduates; novelists, screenwriters, poets, critics, etc, etc, etc…
NTU Academic Staff
Rory Waterman (Hub convener)
NTU staff profile
Website
Professor Rory Waterman is a poet, editor and critic, and has led the MA Creative Writing since 2013. He also teaches on BA Creative Writing, BA English, and MRes English Literary Research, and supervises PhD students in both Creative Writing and English. His first collection was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize in 2014, and his second was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize in 2019. His third was published by Carcanet in May 2020, and a fourth is due in 2024, as is a retrospective volume of his selected press articles and reviews. Waterman’s research interests mainly focus on modern and contemporary poetry. He has written three critical monographs, co-edits New Walk Editions with Nick Everett at the University of Leicester, writes regularly for the TLS, PN Review and other publications, and co-led the AHRC-funded project ‘Poets Respond to Covid-19’ (2020-21). In 2024 and 2025, he led the AHRC-funded Research, Development and Engagement project ‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures‘.
Select publications:
* ed. and contrib. with Anna Milon: Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined (Five Leaves, 2025)
* Come Here to This Gate (Carcanet, 2024)
* Endless Present: Selected Articles, Reviews and Dispatches, 2010-23 (Shoestring, 2024)
* Wendy Cope (LUP, 2021)
* ed. and contrib. with Anthony Caleshu: Poetry & Covid-19 (Shearsman, 2021)
* ed. and contrib.: W. H. Davies: Essays on the Super-Tramp Poet (Anthem, 2021)
* Sweet Nothings (Carcanet, 2020)
* Sarajevo Roses (Carcanet, 2017)
* ed.: The True Traveller: W. H. Davies, A Reader (Fyfield, 2016)
* Poets of the Second World War (LUP, 2015)
* ed. and contrib.: Something Happens, Sometimes Here: Contemporary Lincolnshire Poetry (Five Leaves, 2015)
* Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley (Routledge, 2014)
* Tonight the Summer’s Over (Carcanet, 2013)
Eve Makis
NTU staff profile
Website
Eve Makis teaches on the MA Creative Writing. She studied at the University of Leicester and worked as a journalist and radio presenter in the UK and Cyprus before becoming a novelist. She has published four novels, her books have been translated into six languages, and she co-wrote the screen adaptation of her third book, Land of the Golden Apple, which premiered at Rome Film Festival in October 2016. Her most recent novel, The Spice Box Letters, was longlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award, and awarded the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal. She is a widely-experienced, practicing workshop facilitator in the wider community. From 2024, Eve will be undertaking a PhD by Publication. Her research interests include diasporic writing and creative writing pedagogy.
Select publications:
* with Anthony Cropper: The Accidental Memoir (4th Estate, 2018)
* The Spice Box Letters (Sandstone, 2015)
* Land of the Golden Apple (Black Swan, 2008)
* The Mother-in-Law (Black Swan, 2006)
* Eat, Drink and be Married (Black Swan, 2005)
Andrew Taylor
NTU staff profile
Website
Dr Andrew Taylor is a poet, editor and critic. He leads the BA Creative Writing. He also teaches Poetry on the MA Creative Writing, and supervises Creative Writing and English PhD students. His research interests include experimental poetry, ‘linguistically innovative’ poetry, poetics, conceptual writing and the Beat Generation, the role of collage in creative practice, and practice as research. In addition to the poetry collections listed below, Taylor is the author of many poetry pamphlets, and has edited the Collected Poems of Peter Finch and published the first monograph on Adrian Henri. He co-edits the poetry journal erbacce and edits the online visual poetry journal M58, as well as being co-publisher and an editor at erbacce-press. He is currently working on a new poetry collection, due in 2024, and a critical book on the Welsh poet Peter Finch.
Select publications:
* There’s Everything to Play For: The Poetry of Peter Finch (Seren, 2025)
* European Hymns (Shearsman, 2024)
* Northangerland (Leafe, 2022)
* ed.: Peter Finch, Collected Poems, vol. I and vol. II (Seren, 2022)
* Not There – Here (Shearsman, 2021)
* Adrian Henri: The Poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2019)
* March (Shearsman, 2017)
* Radio Mast Horizon (Shearsman, 2013)
Anthony Cropper
NTU staff profile
Anthony Cropper is a novelist and dramatist, and he teaches on the BA Creative Writing, BA English, and MA Creative Writing. He has published two novels and a collection of short stories, and his play, I’ll Tell You About Love, won the BBC Alfred Bradley Award for Radio Drama. Anthony worked with Bristol Old Vic on the thirty-minute film Myself in Other Lives, and he has collaborated with numerous arts organisations on plays and installations. He has previously taught at the University of Nottingham. His book The Accidental Memoir, co-written with NTU colleague Eve Makis, is designed to help people to tell their stories, and he is an expert in narrative. He is also a widely-experienced, practicing workshop facilitator in the wider community.
Select publications:
* with Eve Makis: The Accidental Memoir (4th Estate, 2018)
* Nature’s Magician (Route, 2009)
James Walker
NTU staff profile
James Walker teaches on the BA Creative Writing and BA English. His specialism is digital storytelling with an emphasis on multi-collaboration across media platforms. Previous projects include The Sillitoe Trail, a commission for BBC/Arts Council multimedia arts platform The Space, and Dawn of the Unread, an interactive graphic novel exploring Nottingham’s literary history
(www.dawnoftheunread.com). This created placements for over 120 NTU students, and won the Teaching Excellence Award at the Guardian Education Awards in March 2015. He has developed, and is developing, modules at NTU that enable students to be actively involved in the conception and production of digital literary heritage projects. These currently include D.H. Lawrence: A Digital Pilgrimage and Whatever People Say I Am.
Jamie Popowich
A fiction writer, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker, Jamie is an associate lecturer and teaches the MA Fiction module and on the BA in Creative Writing. He has also taught workshops in screenwriting, the graphic novel, literature modules on the short story, poetry, and the novel. His main research interests focus on comedy and its various genres, and his current multi-platform project is on prank comedy and political activism. He is in pre-production on a prank feature film, and is researching for a podcast series about prank comedians. His most recent short story collection, Punch Lines, examines the multiple ways we use punch lines to cope with our lives. He is also co-editing a collection of critical essays on the filmmaker Don Siegal.
Select publications:
* Punch Lines (Potential, 2023)
* Chrome Kisses (Insomniac, 2018)
* Metraville (Insomniac, 2011)
Tuesday Shannon
Tuesday’s PhD, which she completed in 2023, explored representations of urban de-industrialisation in contemporary poetry about northern England, with a focus on Tony Harrison, Ian Parks and Helen Mort. Her debut poetry pamphlet is The Rough Guide to Ilkeston (Rack Press, 2023), and she has also had poems published in PN Review, Wild Court, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the NTU MA Creative Writing, and currently teaches on the BA Creative Writing and BA English as an associate lecturer.
Publication:
* The Rough Guide to Ilkeston (Rack Press, 2023)
Tim Youngs
Tim Youngs is Professor Emeritus of English and Travel Studies at Nottingham Trent University, where he taught English literature at undergraduate and postgraduate levels until 2022, and was the
Director of NTU’s Centre for Travel Writing Studies. He is the author or editor of many critical books on travel writing and was, until his retirement, the editor of the academic journal Studies in Travel Writing, which he founded in 1997. His poetry pamphlets are Touching Distance (Five Leaves, 2017) and Transmission Blues (Red Ceilings, 2022). His poems, many of them travel-themed, have appeared in several print and online magazines, including The Interpreter’s House, London Grip, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review and Stride. He continues with his literary research activities and his poetry.
Select publications:
* Transmission Blues (Red Ceilings, 2022)
* ed. with Nandini Das: The Cambridge History of Travel Writing (CUP, 2019)
* ed. with Sarah Jackson: In Transit: Poems of Travel (Emma Press, 2018)
* Touching Distance (Five Leaves, 2017)
* Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation in English Literature, 1885-1900 (LUP, 2013)
* The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (CUP, 2013)
* ed. with Charles Forsdick: Travel Writing: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Routledge, 2012)
* ed.: Travel writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling in the Blank Spaces (Anthem, 2006)
* ed. with Peter Hulme: The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (CUP, 2002)
* ed.: Writing and Race (Longman, 1997)
* Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues 1850-1900 (MUP, 1994)
Gregory Woods
Website
NTU Emeritus Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gregory is a poet and the author of Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry (1987), A History of Gay Literature (1998) and Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World (2016), all from Yale University Press. His poetry includes five collections published by Carcanet Press. He wrote a doctoral thesis on gay men’s poetry at UEA in the late 1970s and began his teaching career at the University of Salerno in 1980. In 1998, he became the first Professor of Gay & Lesbian Studies in the UK.
Select publications:
* Records of an Incitement to Silence (Carcanet, 2021)
* Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World (Yale University Press, 2016)
* The Myth of the Last Taboo: Queer Subcultural Studies (Trent Editions, 2016)
* An Ordinary Dog (Carcanet, 2011)
* Quidnunc (Carcanet, 2007)
* The District Commissioner’s Dreams (Carcanet, 2002)
* A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition (Yale University Press, 1998)
* May I Say Nothing (Carcanet, 1998)
* We Have the Melon (Carcanet Press, 1992)
* Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry (Yale University Press, 1987)
PGR Members
The members listed below are in the Department of Humanities at NTU, and undertaking study towards a PhD including creative writing.
PhD students may request a profile on this page. Please email the Hub convener (see above).
Matt Biggs
PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Opening the Puzzle Box: Exploring Narrative Techniques in Puzzle-Box Storytelling
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (director of Studies – NTU); Anthony Cropper (NTU)
Matt’s creative-critical project explores the recent impacts of puzzle-box narratives on contemporary storytelling. His creative research will include a novel with a puzzle-box narrative. His prize-winning short story, ‘She Came Home’, is available to read at https://crankedanvil.co.uk/2022/09/06/she-came-home-matt-biggs/. Matt is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing. Twitter: @mattbiggswriter
Julie Gardner
PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Fear and hope in contemporary poetry and short fiction
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Andrew Taylor (NTU).
Julie’s PhD considers the interconnected themes of fear and hope in contemporary British poetry by women. her debut pamphlet of poems, Remembering, was published by Five Leaves Publications in 2024. She is a graduate of the NTU MA Creative Writing.
Lucy Grace
AHRC Midlands4Cities PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Stories in Stones: Mines, Memory and the Geological Imagination in the Anthropocene
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Eve Makis (NTU)
Lucy’s creative-critical project explores the human relationship to deep time through the mines and collieries. Her critical and creative research will include a novel set in a former colliery village, reimagining geological spaces and exploring the possibilities of the subterranean as other than a response to ecocatastrophe. Lucy is a graduate of the NTU MA Creative Writing. Twitter: @lgracewriter
Helena Hunter
AHRC Midlands4Cities-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Algae ecologies: scale, temporality and modes of address in contemporary Anthropocene poetry
Supervisors: Philip Leonard (NTU); Sally Little (NTU); Jonathan Skinner (Warwick).
Helena’s creative-critical research investigates the relationship between poetic form and algae, and how an ecology that embraces multiple scales, temporalities and modes of address can help rethink the Anthropocene through poetry. She is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, and works across poetry, visual art and science. She is a member of the Critical Poetics Research Group at NTU. Websites: http://www.helenahunter.net/ and https://www.matterlurgy.net/.
Steve Katon
AHRC Midlands4Cities-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Representations of Disabled Characters in Contemporary Upper Middle-Grade Children’s Literature
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Anthony Cropper (NTU), Stella Chatzitheochari (U of Warwick)
Steve’s research examines the representation of disabled protagonists in contemporary upper middle-grade children’s literature, exploring the societal impact of any dearth and current routes within the publishing industry to redress the balance. In dialogue, he is working on a novel. Steve is a graduate of the NTU MA Creative Writing. X: @SteveKaton
Kai Northcott
NTU Studentship-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Dissociation in contemporary literature
Supervisors: Phil Leonard (Director of Studies – NTU), Rory Waterman (NTU)
Kai’s research is a creative and critical project examining the representation of dissociation in contemporary literature. It seeks to elucidate positive aspects of dissociation and its links to creativity alongside the complex ways dissociation intersects with digital experience and our divided culture. The research will inform a novella exploring these themes. He is a graduate both of the NTU BA and MA Creative Writing.
Graeme Williams
PhD candidate
Thesis topic:
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Eve Makis (NTU).
MA Creative Writing Student Members include:
Jess Ansik
Jess is a Los Angeles–born writer who enjoys storytelling in all forms, writing prose, poetry, and character-driven narratives that blend drama and humour with a wry tilt. Her award-winning short and feature-length scripts earned recognition that helped establish her as an independent screenwriter. Drawing from her background in creative development across film and TV, she is pursuing the MA to deepen her practice and expand its emotional and narrative range. Instagram: @funk_shui.
Bram Bancroft
Bram writes from experience, focusing on reality and trying to make some sense out of it through prose and poetry. He is currently working on a piece of auto-fiction called ‘Ballad of a Barman’, hoping this might become his debut novel.
Leah Corbett
Leah received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from De Montfort University, where she was a Belvoir Poetry Prize nominee 2025. She writes fiction, poetry, and script. Her Substack is here.
Laura De Vivo
At 47, Laura became an NTU BA Creative Writing student. She graduated with a First. Laura is a member of the WRAP programme and is working towards her Arts Fellowship certificate. Laura has developed a love for script, and has had several pieces performed, e.g. at the Royal Concert Hall for the Myths and Legends project. If not hanging around the Bonington Cafe’ on city campus, Laura can be found on @scrivery_writing on Instagram and or on LinkedIn under Laura De Vivo.
Moira Hodgkinson
Moira has been creating stories since she learned how to write. She has published four witchcraft-themed novels and several non-fiction books on practical magic. She is a member of the Society of Authors, and an occasional public speaker, and her short stories and articles have been featured in various magazines and anthologies.
Megan Turner
Megan graduated from NTU in 2020 with a BA in Journalism and a first-class dissertation (https://preview.shorthand.com/8Vm6gebPZCYblZRH)). She then hopped between BBC radio studios and agency PR desks, only to realise she’d rather be writing stories than looking at press releases. Diving into an MA, she’s chasing structure and confidence, to shape the novels and poems she’s always wanted to put out there.
BA Creative Writing members include:
Tim K. Blades
Tim K. Blades is in his second year at NTU, studying BA Creative Writing, as a mature student. He’s primarily a poet who also enjoys drumming and open mic. His influences are personal growth alongside observation of ‘self’ within a dysfunctional urban environment, alongside his love of ‘The Clash’, for relaxation.
Leah Jackson
Leah has been on a long journey with her discovery of theatre and the writing world, and her strong passion for creativity and working with beautiful people. She just didn’t know how to express it…until now.
Emma Nicola Lofnes
Emma is a third-year creative writing student looking to experiment with different forms of professional writing. She has had an internship with the writer Janet Dulin Jones, has worked as a production assistant and intern, and with the York-based Art Exhibition ‘Loneliness in the Digital Age’ as a talent acquisition, and written online and print articles for NTU Platform magazine.
Claire Suzanne
Claire is a mature student, and came to uni to escape the rat race and fulfil her love of writing. She discovered a love of writing after using it for therapeutic purposes, and has never looked back. She loves a bit of dystopian drama and has a pile of unfinished novels she hopes one day to complete. Claire spends her spare time parenting her daughter, and doing things that scare her.
Information about our BA and MA Creative Writing courses is available here.
Current NTU MA and BA Creative Writing students may request to add a profile to this page. We’d like you to, though you are not obliged!
If you are a student on either of these courses and would like one, please send a biographical paragraph of up to c.40 words focused on your writing interests, along with a suitable photo if you want one including, to the Hub convener (see above).
NOTTINGHAM CREATIVE WRITING HUB 