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Creative Writing
Associated Staff
The Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing is the focus for the extensive
Creative Writing activities of the Department of English Literature and
the wider School. It is named after Professor Edwin Morgan, for many years
a member of the Department of English Literature and Scotland’s
pre-eminent poet (and the first national Laureate, as well as the Glasgow
city Laureate), author of poems, plays, essays, translations, creative
collaborations, and much else. The Centre was established in 2000 and
brought into focus the distinguished creative record of the Department
and School, epitomised in the celebrated Masters. Currently the Centre
boasts a growing resource centre for all graduate students, with primary
texts, a video and sound library, a periodical collection and creative
work space. It also hosts a series of major and minor events: readings,
lectures, master-classes and seminars with visiting speakers of national
and international stature. Associated with the Edwin Morgan Centre are
the established literary magazine PN Review, published from the
Centre itself, and the publishing house Carcanet, with an Editorial office
in the centre. The Masters students traditionally edit and publish an
annual anthology of their work, generally in collaboration with one or
another Scottish literary publishing house. Masters students and a selection
of outstanding undergraduates edit and produce separate on-line magazines
as well.
In addition to running the taught MLitt in Creative Writing and developing
the first taught PhD in the discipline, the centre brings together a wide
range of people with shared creative and research interests in fiction,
poetry, life-writing and script writing. Students and faculty involved
in the work of the centre meet in a variety of creative and research contexts:
tutorials, seminars, editorial committees, workshops, master classes,
Q&A sessions, public readings etc. The annual PN Review Lecture,
administered by the Centre, features major critical and creative voices
associated with modern poetry. Professor Christopher Ricks inaugurates
the series. Other visitors, past and future, include Margaret Atwood,
Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Carlos Fuentes, Lorna
Goodison, Andrew Motion, Sharon Olds and Frederic Raphael. In the recent
past, speakers have included, among others: John Agard, Roddy Doyle, Kathleen
Jamie, Jackie Kay, A. L. Kennedy, Bernard MacLaverty, Brian McCabe, Les
Murray and Grace Paley. Visiting publishers include Peter Straus (Picador),
Mitzi Angel (Fourth Estate), Jamie Byng (Canongate), Sean Costello (Mercat
Press/Crescent Fiction), Judy Moir (Penguin), Hannah Griffiths (Faber)
and Bob McDevitt (Hodder/Headline).
A brief history and prospect
The University of Glasgow’s commitment goes back a long way, but
became defined when the Masters in Creative Writing was founded in 1995
by Professor Philip Hobsbaum and Professor Willy Maley. Philip Hobsbaum
had already gained a remarkable reputation, running writers’ groups
in London, Belfast and Glasgow for over thirty years. Writers associated
with these groups include Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, but those
who proved most relevant to the Glasgow programme were Alasdair Gray,
James Kelman, Liz Lochhead, Bernard MacLaverty and Tom Leonard.
In 1998 the Glasgow Masters became a joint Masters taught by the Universities
of Glasgow and Strathclyde. This added the novelists Margaret Elphinstone
and Zoe Wicomb to its list of teachers. By 2001 the Masters course was
one of the most successful postgraduate courses of its kind in the United
Kingdom, and the University of Glasgow established a chair in creative
writing, which was jointly held by Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Tom
Leonard from 2001-2003. In 2002 the administration of the Masters reverted
to the University of Glasgow and the novelist Janice Galloway (2002-2006)
and the poet and playwright Liz Lochhead joined the teaching staff. The
University of Strathclyde withdrew from the course in order to start its
new undergraduate programme in creative writing and journalism.
In 2003 Alasdair Gray retired and James Kelman and Liz Lochhead left
to take up other commitments (though Liz Lochhead has returned to the
University where she is currently Writer in Residence and has an association
with the Edwin Morgan Centre); and two successful young novelists, Zoe
Strachan and Louise Welsh, both formerly students on the course, were
appointed teachers. In 2004 two more novelists joined the teaching team,
Laura Marney (also a graduate of the course and now Deputy Convenor) and
Alan Bissett.
The Masters in Creative Writing has recruited in 2006-7 44 full- and
part-time students and involves three dedicated teachers (with a fourth
on a year’s leave) and contributions from members of the Departments
of English Literature, Scottish Literature and Gaelic. Also associated
with the programme is the poet Professor Tom Leonard.
Programme developments over the next eighteen months include: the delivery
of a Creative Writing undergraduate option in year 4 (open to students
in the School and Faculty); the growth to 60 part- and full-time students
on the campus-based MLitt; an on-line delivered full-time MLitt programme,
recruiting 12 individuals from around the world each year; and a campus-based
taught Creative Writing PhD programme, the first of its kind in the UK.
It is envisaged that one further full-time member of staff, a professional
writer able to work on the academic and creative sides, will be recruited;
and there will be a series of visiting teachers (fellows/professors).
Many of our Masters students have been published in book form. These
include: Nicola Barry [2002-04], Mother’s Ruin (Headline
Review, 2007); Nick Brooks [2000-02], My Name is Denise Forrester
(Orion, 2004); Nick Brooks [2000-02], The Good Death (Orion,
2006); Lynsey Calderwood [2002-04], Cracked (Jessica Kingsley
Publishers, 2002); Anne Donovan [1999-01], Hieroglyphics (Canongate,
2001); Anne Donovan [1999-01], Buddha Da (Canongate, 2002); Stephanie
Green [2002-04], Glass Works (Cat's Pyjama Publications, 2005);
Rodge Glass [2001-03], No Fireworks (Faber, 2005); Jen Hadfield
[2000-01], Almanacs (Bloodaxe Books, 2005); Mandy Haggith [2003-05],
Letting Light In (Essence Press, 2005); Shug Hanlan [1996-98],
Hi Bonnybrig (Neil Wilson Publishing, 2000); Jennifer McCartney
[2004-05], Afloat (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton, 2006); Laura Marney
[1998-01], No Wonder I Take a Drink (Black Swan, 2004); Laura
Marney [1998-01], Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby (Black Swan, 2005);
Laura Marney [1998-01], Only Strange People Go To Church (Black
Swan, 2006); Alison Miller [2001-03], Demo (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin,
October 2005); Will Napier [1999-00], Summer of the Cicada (Jonathan
Cape, 2005); Landon J. Napoleon [1995-96], Zigzag (Bloomsbury/Henry
Holt, 1999) ; Colette Paul [2000-02], Whoever You Choose to Love
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004); Rachel Seiffert [1999-00], The Dark
Room (Heinemann, 2001); Rachel Seiffert [1999-00], Field Study
(Heinemann, 2004); Alastair Sim [2004-06], Rosslyn Blood
(Publish America, 2004); Zoe Strachan [1998-00], Negative Space (Picador
2002); Zoe Strachan [1998-00], Spin Cycle (Picador, 2004); Louise
Welsh [1998-00], The Cutting Room (Canongate, 2002); Louise Welsh
[1998-00], Tamburlaine Must Die (Canongate, 2004); Louise Welsh
[1998-00], The Bullet Trick (Canongate, 2006); Graeme Williamson
[1998-00], Strange Faith (Neil Wilson Publishing, 2001).
Other students have been published on-line, in magazines and journals,
or have had their work produced and broadcast. Some have been shortlisted
for major short fiction prizes, including the Canongate and Fish Awards;
Rachel Seiffert was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and two – Dorothy
Alexander and Anne Donovan – have won the Macallan. Freda Church’s
short story ‘Spoonface’ recently won the Fish Short Story
Award judged by Roddy Doyle, and in 2004 Eunice Buchanan won the McCash
Scots Poetry competition. The £5000 New Writing Ventures Award 2006
(Norwich) went to Eleanor Thom, who took her degree in 2006 for ‘Burns’,
a chapter from her first novel.
It is worth noting too the past and current successes of the Masters
programme as measured by PhD candidates at this and other institutions
who have progressed through the Masters, and the number of AHRC-funded
places (well above the national average) in our existing PhD programme.
The conversions from CW Masters to PhD (creative and critical), and new
students who have come to Glasgow to work with our creative team, include
twenty five in total, twenty one at Glasgow, one at St Andrews, two at
Strathclyde, one at Kingston. Half attained Distinctions in the Masters,
five have published books, five have AHRC funding. These are (with funding
information in brackets by the name) at the UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW: Dorothy
Alexander (AHRC); Nicola Barry; Janice Brown; Eunice Buchanan; Jim Ferguson
(AHRC); Rodge Glass (AHRC); Shug Hanlan; Tim Jarvis (AHRC); Anneliese
Mackintosh (AHRC); Cathy McSporran (Writing Up); Maureen Myant; William
Napier; Sarah Neely (Completed 2003, permanent post at Paisley University);
Fiona Parrott (Completed 2006); Nalini Paul; Kenneth Pratt; Sheila Puri;
Elizabeth Reeder; Rachel Seiffert (AHRC); Chiew-Siah Tei; Sam Trainor
(Completed 2006); Kristina Weaver (Marshall/ORS); at the UNIVERSITY OF
ST ANDREWS: Aimee Chalmers; at the UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE: Dave Manderson;
Colette Paul (CARNEGIE); at the UNIVERSITY OF KINGSTON: Kathy McKean (AHRC).
Staff currently associated with the Creative Writing Programme
at the Edwin Morgan Centre
Alan Bissett (Creative Writing/English Literature) is
the author of the novels Boyracers and The Incredible Adam
Spark, as well as editor of Damage Land: New Scottish Gothic
Fiction. He was short- or longlisted for the Macallan/Scotland on
Sunday Short Competition for four years running. He was previously lecturer
in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds, and is now working on
his third novel. He is a member of the Scottish Book Trust.
Dr John Coyle (English Literature) has published on
Proust, Ruskin, Joyce, Alain-Fournier and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he
has edited two collections of critical essays on James Joyce. His current
work focuses on contemporary American fiction, especially on that of Don
De Lillo, and on the relations between advertising and modernism.
Professor Mike Gonzalez (Hispanic Studies) specialises
in Spanish-American culture, literature and history, film and music; Spanish
Language, especially for interpreting and other vocational purposes. His
interests include the Mexican novel and modern poetry, as well as the
role of music in Latin American culture. He is best-known as the editor
of the Collins Concise Spanish Dictionary. He has helped produce
courses for the BBC, especially Sueños. He edited
the OUP Encyclopedia of Latin American Culture. Most recently
his dramatic scripts have been performed in Glasgow.
Professor Nigel Leask (English Literature) is Regius
Chair in English Language and Literature. He has published widely in the
area of romantic literature and culture, with a special emphasis on empire,
orientalism, and travel writing. His British Romantic Writers and
the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge University Press 1992) was
a pioneering study of the anxieties and instabilities of Romantic representations
of the 'Orient' in the writings of Byron, Shelley, De Quincey, Southey,
Moore and others; while his monograph Curiosity and the Aesthetics
of Travel Writing, 1770-1840: 'From an Antique Land' (Oxford University
Press, 2002) is the first study of its kind to explore the Romantic obsession
with the 'antique lands' of Ethiopia, Egypt, India and Mexico from a post-colonial
perspective, drawing on a wide range of 18th and 19th century travel books,
as well as recent scholarship in literature, history, geography and anthropology.
He is also the editor of Romantic Period Travel Narratives of Spanish
America and the Caribbean, volume 4 of Travels, Explorations
and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial Expansion 1770-1835
(Pickering and Chatto, 2002).
Professor Tom Leonard (Creative Writing/English Literature)
is one of Scotland's leading poets and essayists, whose work repeatedly
addresses the politics of language and power in Britain, and has ranged
in form from pamphlet protests against military engagements, to experiments
in concrete and sound poetry. Professor Leonard shared the Saltire Scottish
Book of the Year Award in 1984 for his collection Intimate Voices,
a breakthrough volume for poetry in Scots, opening the doors of language,
class and culture. Leonard's 1990 anthology Radical Renfrew gives
voice to a forgotten tradition of radical verse, brought to light through
detailed archival work. Leonard's account of the life and art of James
Thomson broke new ground in biography and criticism, and exemplifies his
engagement with other artists as a writer responding to writers. access
to the silence (poems 1984-2004) was published in June 2004.
Professor Willy Maley (English Literature) is a co-founder,
with Philip Hobsbaum, of the Creative Writing Master’s at Glasgow
University. He has published widely on early modern English Literature,
from Spenser to Milton, and on aspects of early modern and modern Scottish
and Irish culture, from James Joyce to Alasdair Gray. Although chiefly
a critic and editor, Willy has a number of plays to his name, including
the prison dramas No Mean Fighter (Edinburgh Fringe First Winner
1992), Dirt Enters At The Heart (1993), and Doing Bird
(1995); two historical dramas, From the Calton to Catalonia (1990)
and Gallowglass (1991); and three Glasgow comedies, The Furst
Fit (1989), In-Laws and Outlaws (1991), and The Lions
of Lisbon (1992). He has also published poetry and fiction, and has
been a writer-in-residence in HMP Barlinnie Special Unit, Milton Unemployed
Workers’ Centre, and Royston Library.
Laura Marney (Creative Writing/English Literature),
Deputy Convenor of the MLitt programme, was born in Glasgow and gained
an MPhil in Creative Writing from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde.
Many of her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies
or broadcast on radio. Her first novel No Wonder I Take A Drink
was published in June 2004 by Transworld under the Black Swan imprint.
Her second novel Nobody Loves A Ginger Baby was published in
August 2005, and her third, Only Strange People Go To Church,
appeared in July 2006. She is currently working on a fourth novel.
Dr Rob Maslen (English Literature) has taught at the
University since 1992, and on the Creative Writing Programme since 2000.
His particular interests are in fantastic fiction of all kinds and in
theatre, but he also enjoys poetry and other forms of prose - including
the kind that accompanies the pictures in graphic novels. In his capacity
as a Renaissance scholar, he has recently completed a book about Shakespeare.
Dr Andrew Radford (English Literature) has published
essays on African American fiction, especially the Harlem Renaissance,
and on Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. His current research
project examines the use of the Demeter-Persephone myth in the work of
a number of authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
including Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Edith Wharton and D. H. Lawrence.
Professor Alan Riach (Scottish Literature) is a poet
and Head of the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of
Glasgow. His fourth book of poems, Clearances, was co-published
by the Scottish Cultural Press and Hazard Press, New Zealand, in 2001.
Other books of poetry include First & Last Songs (Chapman
Books/Auckland University Press, 1995) and This Folding Map (Auckland
University Press/Oxford University Press, 1990). He is the General Editor
of the 20-volume Carcanet Press Collected Works of Hugh MacDiarmid
and the co-editor of Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (Carcanet, 2004).
His radio series The Good of the Arts, first broadcast in New Zealand
2001, may be visited at http://www.southwest.org.nz/.
Professor Michael Schmidt (English Literature), convenor
of the MLitt and director of the Creative Writing programme at the University
of Glasgow, has published two novels and several collections of poetry.
His most recent work as a literary historian has examined Anglophone writing
from around the world. Lives of the Poets (1999), Lives of
the Ancient Poets (2004) and the ongoing series The Story of
Poetry have been at the centre of his work. He is currently writing
Lives of the Novelists. He has compiled, apart from several introductory
anthologies of new poets' work, several educational and representative
anthologies, notably The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry
in English. His new book of poems The Resurrection of the Body
will appear in 2007.
Zoe Strachan (Creative Writing/English Literature) has
an MA in Archaeology and Philosophy from the University of Glasgow, and
gained an MPhil in Creative Writing from the Universities of Glasgow and
Strathclyde in 1999. She received a Writers' Bursary from the Scottish
Arts Council in 1999, and her first novel, Negative Space (Picador),
was published in 2002 to critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the
Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year Award, and won a Betty Trask Award.
Her second novel, Spin Cycle, came out in August 2004,
also with Picador. Her short stories have appeared in many literary magazines,
including the Edinburgh Review, and her articles and reviews have appeared
in national newspapers and magazines. She has contributed to Off the Page
and Open Book on Radio 4, among other programmes, as well as co-presenting
the literary magazine Word Play on Radio Magnetic. In 2004 she received
a Hawthornden Fellowship.
Associated staff
Alan Bissett
John Coyle
Mike Gonzalez
Nigel
Leask
Tom Leonard
Willy
Maley
Laura Marney
Rob
Maslen
Andrew
Radford
Alan
Riach
Michael
Schmidt
Zoe Strachan
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