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
Dr Rory Waterman is a poet, editor and critic, and has led the MA Creative Writing since 2013. He also teaches on BA English and BA Creative Writing, 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. 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).
Select publications:
* 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)
William Ivory
William Ivory is a leading figure in the international film and theatre industry, and Senior Lecturer in Scriptwriting at NTU, teaching on our MA and BA Creative Writing programmes. His feature-length films have premiered internationally and won many awards. He is also the author of a number of stage plays and television dramas. His work ranges from crime (The Sins), to comedy (The Invisibles and Common as Muck), to historical drama (Night Flight), and adaptation (Women in Love). He has received major critical success for his work, with his seven-part series, The Sins, winning The Edgar Allan Poe Award in New York, and his television drama, Journey to Knock, winning Best Screenplay and Best Single Drama at the European Television awards in Reims, as well as Best Original Screenplay at the New York Television Festival. He also received outstanding critical acclaim from his feature film Made in Dagenham (2010), starring Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson and Sally Hawkins, winning Best Screenplay and Best Feature at Dinard Film Festival and Best Film at The Variety Club of Great Britain Awards. His film Torvill and Dean was on ITV1 on Christmas Day 2018. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film The Great Escaper, which is currently in production, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson.
Eve Makis
NTU staff profile
Website
Eve Makis is a novelist, and she 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 and 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 latest novel, The Spice Box Letters, was long listed for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015, shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award and awarded the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal.
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 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 three 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.
Select publications:
* Northangerland (Leafe, 2022)
* ed.: Peter Finch, Collected Poems, vol. I and vol. II (Seren, 2022)
* Not There – Here (Shearman, 2021)
* Adrian Henri: The Poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2019)
* March (Shearsman, 2017)
* Radio Mast Horizon (Shearsman, 2013)
Sarah Jackson
NTU staff profile
Website
Dr Sarah Jackson teaches creative writing and literary studies at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and leads the Critical Poetics Research Group. Supported by an Arts Council Award, Sarah’s poetry collection Pelt (Bloodaxe, 2012) won the Seamus Heaney Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award (2013). In 2017, her story ‘Echolocation’ was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Award, and her fiction, poetry and critical writing have appeared in a wide range of magazines and journals including Irish Pages, The Rialto and Oxford Literary Review. Sarah is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker and an AHRC Leadership Fellow, and is currently writing a book about the telephone.
Select publications:
* ed. with Tim Youngs: In Transit: Poems of Travel (Emma Press, 2018)
* Tactile Poetics: Touch and Contemporary Writing (EUP, 2015)
* Pelt (Bloodaxe, 2012)
David Belbin
NTU staff profile
Website
Dr David Belbin is a novelist, and he teaches on the BA Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing. He is the author of more than forty novels, including Student, Love Lessons, Secret Gardens and the Bone and Cane series. He has written many crime novels and published two historical novels, along with numerous YA novels and short stories for readers of all ages. His work has been translated into 25 languages. David’s most recent book is a memoir, Don’t Mention the Night (Five Leaves, 2022). An experienced editor, he has worked with many emerging writers, along with winners of the Booker Prize, the Carnegie Medal and the Crime Writers’ Diamond Dagger. He edited the Crime Express series for Five Leaves Press, and chaired Nottingham’s successful bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature.
Select publications:
* Don’t Mention the Night: A Memoir (Five Leaves, 2022)
* Death in the Family (Shoestring, 2021)
* Provenance: New and Collected Stories (Shoestring, 2016)
* The Great Deception (Freight, 2015)
* What You Don’t Know (Tindal Street, 2012)
* Student (Five Leaves, 2012)
* Secret Gardens (Five Leaves, 2011)
* The Pretender (Five Leaves, 2008)
Anthony Cropper
NTU staff profile
Anthony Cropper is a novelist and dramatist, and 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.
Select publications:
* with Eve Makis: The Accidental Memoir (4th Estate, 2018)
* Nature’s Magician (Route, 2009)
James Walker
NTU staff profile
James Walker’s 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.
Becky Cullen
Becky Cullen came to NTU as an MA in Creative Writing student in 2011, then undertook a Midlands3Cities-funded PhD in Creative and Critical Writing, working on the relationship between poetry and time through an analysis of the poetry of Sujata Bhatt, Michael Ondaatje and Susan Howe. In 2019, Becky was a Midlands3Cities Cultural Economy Engagement Fellow in partnership with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. She has worked as a lecturer in English at NTU, and is Director of the award-winning NTU-wide creative writing and book club programme, WRAP. Her creative work has been published in journals such as The North, New Walk and PN Review, and in the anthology New Poetries VII (Carcanet, 2018). Her pamphlet Majid Sits in a Tree and Sings was a winner of the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition and her collection A Reader’s Guide to Time won the Live Canon first collection prize.
Select publications:
* A Reader’s guide to Time (Live Canon, 2022)
* Majid Sits in a Tree and Sings (Smith Doorstop, 2018)
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)
Sue Dymoke
Sue Dymoke is a poet, and teaches in the Nottingham Institute of Education at NTU where she supervises PhD and Masters students. Her research focuses on creative pedagogies, poetry education and how young people are mentored to develop as poets. Sue is particularly interested in found poetry, using local archive materials to stimulate place-based writing and creative connections between poetry and science to develop public engagement with scientific agendas. She regularly leads writing workshops and performs her work, and has published three poetry collections with Shoestring Press.
Select publications:
* What They Left Behind (Shoestring Press, 2018)
* ‘Time’, Writing in Education 75 (summer 2018), 56 – 60
* ed. with Myra Barrs, Andrew Lambirth and Anthony Wilson: Making Poetry Happen: transforming the poetry classroom (Bloomsbury , 2015: Highly commended, UKLA Academic Book Award 2016)
* ed. with Andrew Lambirth and Anthony Wilson: Making Poetry Matter: international research perspectives on poetry pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2013)
* Moon at the Park and Ride (Shoestring Press, 2012)
* The New Girls (Shoestring Press, 2004)
* Drafting and Assessing Poetry (Paul Chapman Publishing, 2003)
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 Student Members
The members listed below are in the Department of English, Philosophy and Communications 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).
Paul Adey
AHRC/Midlands3Cities-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: ‘”I gave you power”: The Weaponisation of Literary Intertextuality in Hip-hop Lyricism’
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Jenni Ramone (NTU), Sophy Smith (DMU)
Paul’s creative and critical thesis explores the presence and function of literary intertextuality in the hip-hop tradition. Specifically, it examines how these artists ‘weaponize’ literary allusion and intertextuality. Paul is also an author and (as Cappo) a widely respected hip-hop artist. He is a graduate of both the NTU BA English with Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing.
Panya Banjoko
Vice-Chancellor’s Bursary-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: ‘The Politics of Poetry in Nottingham and the Role of African-Caribbean Writers and Networks in the 1970s and 1980s’
Supervisors: Sharon Monteith (Director of Studies – NTU), Rory Waterman (NTU), Nahem Yousaf (NTU)
Panya’s debut poetry collection is Some Things (Burning Eye Books, 2018). Her work has been published in various anthologies, and she has performed widely, including the 2012 Olympic Games. Panya coordinates a black writers’ network, and is a patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and the founder of Nottingham Black Archive. Website
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
Victoria Zoe Callus
AHRC/Midlands4Cities-funded PhD candidate
Thesis topic: Paper Cuts: Investigating Paper Affect in Contemporary Experimental Literature
Supervisors: Sarah Jackson (Director of Studies – NTU); Philip Leonard (NTU); Emma Cocker (NTU).
Victoria Zoe’s creative-critical project explores how paper engages affect in contemporary experimental literature. Further, it materially interrogates the ways paper still allows for literary and aesthetic innovation in the twenty-first century. She is a graduate of the NTU BA English and Creative Writing and MRes English Literary Research.
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 fiction and poetry. She is considering the work of contemporary authors in this context, and working on a collection of poems and creative nonfiction. 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: Daniel Cordle (Director of Studies – NTU), Rory Waterman (NTU), Sarah Jackson (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: Sarah Jackson (Director of Studies – NTU); 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/.
Ramisha Rafique
PhD candidate
Thesis topic: ‘The ontology of the British Muslim Flâneuse: Decolonisation in British Muslim women’s writing’
Supervisors: Jenni Ramone (Director of Studies – NTU), Andrew Taylor (NTU)
Ramisha’s creative-critical doctoral project explores the ontology of the Postcolonial Flâneuse through close examination of British Muslim women’s writing, and includes original travel poetry. Ramisha initiated NTU’s first ever Islamophobia Awareness Month in 2021. She is a graduate of both NTU’s BA English with Creative Writing and MA Creative Writing.
Tuesday Shannon
AHRC/Midlands4Cities PhD candidate
Thesis topic: ‘Poetics of the Spatial Turn: Place Attachment, Economic Instability and Contemporary Poetry’
Supervisors: Rory Waterman (Director of Studies – NTU), Andrew Taylor (NTU), Nicholas Everett (U of Leicester)
Tuesday’s research explores representations of urban de-industrialisation in contemporary poetry about northern England, with a focus on Tony Harrison, Ian Parks and Helen Mort. A selection of her poems is in Take Three (Soundswrite, 2019), and she has also had poems published in PN Review, Wild Court, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the NTU MA Creative Writing.
MA Creative Writing Student Members include:
Demetra Aldridge
Aspiring romance author and Project Manager of student-led anthology Almost Home, Demi is an avid reader, favouring fantasy and romance. She enrolled onto the MA Creative Writing to develop her writing skills and meet new people after her move to Nottingham.
Eleana Assimacopoulos
Eleana is an aspiring YA author, and a journalist with many articles online. She has also created and edited many photojournalism pieces, a short film, and a documentary. She started writing as a way to express herself through the means of fictional characters and world-building. Website here.
Damon Brearley-Ince
Damon writes contemporary and high fantasy stories. He has self-published several LGBT+ works under the pseudonym Dayton Idoni (GOODREADS.COM). Through studying the MA in Creative Writing, he hopes to hone his abilities and gain insight about the complex world of professional publishing.
Bryna Broady
Bryna discovered poetry at a young age: she joined her first poetry workshop at five, and had a selection of her poems published in a children’s anthology at seven. She has been writing poems ever since. When not writing poems or short prose she reads fantasy fiction, and has a keen interest in biblical poetry.
Tim Buescher
Tim is a failed trainee clergyman and accidental cook/deliberate trade unionist, who became an accidental nurse, who became an accidental academic. Perpetually either bored or overexcited, he writes, edits, and organises, performing at this year’s Coracle Europe festival fringe. Tim can be found at @B33f4rt or you can email him at timbuescher1975@gmail.com.
Ruth Flynn
Ruth discovered her potential as a poet when she entered an anthology competition and was a semi-finalist. Her children’s book based on African Queens and their kingdoms is in print. Ruth hopes to publish more children’s books in future. Website here. Twitter: @thedynastyseries
Sue Gale
Sue enjoys writing memoir and has written a travel diary entitled ‘Going to Matonga to Dance.’ She has completed two further collections of prose and poetry (all unpublished.) She is doing an MA in order to further develop her skills and broaden her range, particularly in the area of short story writing.
Penny Harrison
Penny has been a journalist and copywriter for more than 15 years, writing news and lifestyle features for national newspapers and magazines. Her writing on place, nature and wellbeing can be found at www.theplacewerein.co.uk. She now aspires to write more fiction.
Fiona McGowan
Writing has always been therapeutic for Fiona, who expresses and explores catharsis and social injustice through poetry and scripting. She hopes to gain further publications and opportunities, encouraging (black) mental health awareness, social change, and woman empowerment.
Sarah Smith
A former nurse, Sarah discovered writing as a means to express herself during a difficult journey to motherhood. A voracious reader since childhood, she was surprised to find herself on the business end of a pen. She dipped into courses and classes around being a full time mum, until the pull into the world of writing could no longer be ignored.
Chloe Walker
Chloe enjoys writing in and across various mediums, such as in song writing, poetry, plays and, especially, video games. She is taking the ‘Poetry’ and ‘Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen’ modules on the MA.
BA Creative Writing members include:
Annie Cross
Annie is a second-year BA Creative Writing student who has wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. She mostly enjoys writing performance poetry and short stories, but is hoping to draft her first novel very soon.
Rebecca Eaton
Rebecca is a third-year BA Creative Writing student. An avid reader and passionate writer, she’s been writing since she was six years old. She favours prose, particularly novels, though she also writes poetry. She is currently working on several novels. She also writes stories in the form of fanfiction in her spare time. Twitter: @RJEaton_
Elmo Moorby
Elmo (they/them) is a third-year BA Creative Writing student, and Chief Editor of the magazines Kairos and Creative Bastards. Elmo enjoys subverting the expected, specifically in the horror and science fiction genres. They hope to self-publish the inaugural edition of Creative Bastards this year, and have ambitions to publish a volume of short stories.
Laura De Vivo
Laura can remember when she decided she wanted to write: she was ten, had read everything she had more than once, and needed something new – so she grabbed pen and paper. Joining workshops to improve her skills made her fall in love with writing even more and now, at the tender age of 47, she has become an undergrad at NTU. She is fascinated by children’s writing, and has written many short stories, her favourite being about her beautiful grandmother.
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 