Welcome Semester Creative Writing Events for your Diary: – Meet some amazing writers, have a drink, get to know your writing community!
- Graham Rawle, Graphic Novelist, on his projects. Monday the 9th of October. 11.00-12.30, Quad South Hall. No booking necessary.
- Mark Illis and Zoe Marriott, Royal Literary Fund fellows, reading from their work. Wednesday 18th of October 5-6pm in the Chapel. Book free tickets here.
- Laudanum Publishing Poetry Event with readings by Dr. Kimberly Campanello (YSJ Lecturer), Abigail Parry and Fran Lock Thursday the 26th of October 7-8.30pm in the Students Union. Book free tickets here.
- Launch of two debut dystopian novels from YSJ Creative Writing staff Dr Naomi Booth and Prof Abi Curtis, Thursday 30th of November, 7-9pm in York Waterstones. Book free tickets here.
Event Info:
Graham Rawle is a UK writer and collage artist whose visual work incorporates illustration, design, photography and installation. His weekly Lost Consonants series appeared in the Weekend Guardian for 15 years.
He has lectured and exhibited his work internationally, heading the design team that created the 4,000 sq ft (370 m2) ‘Hi-Life’ supermarket installation for EXPO 2000 in Hanover. As director of the Niff Institute, in 2001 he created a range of limited edition art pieces that form the Niff Actuals product range.
Among his astonishing published books are The Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, Diary of an Amateur Photographer and a reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz, which won 2009 Book of the Year and best Illustrated Trade book at the British Book Design Awards. His critically acclaimed Woman’s World, a novel created entirely from fragments of found text, is being made into a feature film.
Graham Rawle is a lecturer on the Sequential Design/Illustration MA at The Faculty of Arts (University of Brighton). http://www.grahamrawle.com/womansworld/index.html
Mark Illis, RLF Fellow
http://www.markillis.co.uk
Mark Illis is a novelist and writer of short stories, who has also written for television, radio and film. He has been a literature development worker, a centre director for the Arvon Foundation and an editor for Yorkshire Arts Circus. In July 2017, his first Young Adult novel, THE IMPOSSIBLE, winner of a Northern Writers’ Award in 2015, will be published by Quercus. When teenagers in Gilpin start suffering from strange mutations, someone needs to find out what’s going on. Enter Hector, who’s suffering maybe the strangest mutation of all.
Zoe Marriott, RLF Fellow
http://www.zoemarriott.com/biography.html
Zoë Marriott is the critically acclaimed author of eight feminist, diverse novels for young adults, which draw strongly on world mythology, fairytales and folklore. Her first book, The Swan Kingdom (Walker Books, 2007), based on Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Wild Swans’, was written when she was just twenty-one. It went on to become a USBBY Outstanding International book, was shortlisted for the Lincolnshire Young People’s book award, longlisted for the Branford Boase award, and was chosen for the 2009 International Reading Association booklist. Shadows on the Moon (Walker Books 2011), a Japanese-influenced retelling of ‘Cinderella’, is widely considered a classic of UK young adult fiction.. Her short story ‘Storm Clouds Fleeing from the Wind’ (Things I’ll Never Say anthology, Candlewick, 2015) was recommended for a James Tiptree Jr award.
Laudanum Chapbook Anthology: Volume Two – Abigail Parry, Kimberly Campanello, Frances Lock, ed. by Tiffany Anne Tondut
‘As a showcase of vivid voices, taking a range of different approaches, this anthology doesn’t disappoint.’
–Becky Varley-Winter, Sabotage Reviews
Abigail Parry has won a number of prizes and awards for her work, including the Ballymaloe Prize, the Troubadour Prize and an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection, Jinx, will be published by Bloodaxe in 2018.
Fran Lock is the author of three poetry collections, Dogtooth (Out-Spoken Press, 2017), The Mystic and the Pig Thief (Salt Publishing, 2014), and Flatrock (Little Episodes Publishing, 2011). She is the winner of the Ambit Poetry Competition 2014, and her poem Last Exit to Luton came third in the 2014 National Poetry Competition.
Kimberly Campanello [Lectuer in Creative Writing at YSJ] was born in Elkhart, Indiana. Her most recent poetry book is Hymn to Kālī (Eyewear Publishing). She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University.
Tiffany Anne Tondut is laudanum’s founding publisher, series editor and designer. Her poetry has been published in various publications including The Rialto, Magma, Poetry News and Best New British and Irish Poets 2016. In 2015 she was a prize winner in The Troubadour’s International Poetry Prize. She lives and works in London.
Sealed by Naomi Booth [Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at YSJ]
‘There is an unbearable truth about the modern world to be found in this book, but it cannot be looked at, or talked of directly. There is only a state of dulled awareness about a terrifying epidemic, drawing closer, pulling tighter – until the final, visceral pages where the horror must come out in a rush of blood and desperation. What a delicate, provoking balance of apocalyptic vision and personal journey Sealed is. I loved it.’
– Aliya Whiteley, The Arrival of Missives
Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother’s fight to survive.
Naomi Booth was born and raised in West Yorkshire and is now based in York, where she lectures in Creative Writing and Literature at York St John University.
Water & Glass by Abi Curtis
Abi Curtis’ [Prof. of Creative Writing at YSJ] first novel, Water & Glass, will be published in Autumn 2017 by Cloud Lodge Books
“Speculative fiction is nothing without a beating heart, something real and human (or animal) at stake, and Water & Glass has this in boatloads. On every page Curtis combines a poet’s eye for the perfect, resonant detail with a blockbuster’s suspense and delivery on story. As beautifully surreal and symbolic as it gets, there’s something unshakeably, alarmingly plausible about this novel and its dramatisation of the next century: what we stand to lose and what may already be too late to save. An urgent, gorgeously written debut.”
–Luke Kennard, award winning author of The Transition
Abi Curtis is Professor of Creative Writing at York St. John University and is an award-winning poet. In 2004, she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her first poetry collection Unexpected Weather was published after winning the Crashaw Poetry Prize in 2008, and in 2013 Curtis received a Somerset Maugham Award for her second poetry collection The Glass Delusion.
