Brunel Writers 2019

CREATIVE WRITING AT BRUNEL The Creative Writing faculty at Brunel presents an amazing line-up of writers for the Writers Series 2019.

Hosted by Bernardine Evaristo Professor of Creative Writing All in the library at 5.30 on Weds except for the Jaybird event

Wednesday 23 January

WRITING EXPERIMENTAL CRIME FICTION Tony White with Dr Nick Hubble With student writers: Stacy Scott, Nathalie Tang

Tony White Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest received high praise when it was published by Faber and Faber in 2018.

He is the author of five previous novels including Foxy-T and Shackleton’s Man Goes South, several novellas and numerous short stories. White has been creative entrepreneur in residence in the French department at King’s College London, and writer in residence at London’s Science Museum and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. From 2010–2018 Tony White chaired the board of London’s awardwinning arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm. Tony is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel.

Nick Hubble Nick Hubble is Reader in English at Brunel University London. His publications include Mass Observation in Everyday Life: Culture, History, Theory.

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Monday 28 January | 16:00

Jaybird Live Literature presents: What Days We’re Having Now A new poetry show Introduced by Daljit Nagra featuring Alex MacDonald, Ella Frears and Will Harris When you’re on an adventure, you need a map

Take one last look at your teenage bedroom - its floordrobe and cereal bowls, the photos on the wall – then head out into the world. What Days We’re Having Now is a live anthology of subtly theatricalised poems. Images scroll by like an Instagram feed: a flower pressed in a book, a cartoon frog, a stack of nachos cooked by a TV chef.

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Through performed poems touching on identity, uncertainty, the meaning of family and the nature of love, Alex, Ella and Will talk to us. They lead us away from home and help us find our way back.

Navigate your lives with their poems.

Monday 28 January | 16:00

Will Harris

Alex MacDonald

Will Harris has worked in schools, led workshops at the Southbank Centre and taught for The Poetry School. He coedits 13 Pages and organises The Poetry Inquisition. He is an Assistant Editor at The Rialto, part of the editorial team behind Swimmers and a fellow of The Complete Works III. His poem ‘Say’ is shortlisted for the 2018 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. His pamphlet All This Is Implied is published by Happenstance.

Alex MacDonald has recently had poems published by Clinic, English Pen, Rising and The Oxfam Book of Young Poets. He was a runner up in the Pighog / Poetry School Prize and ran the reading series ‘Selected Poems at the V&A Reading Rooms’. He’s a parliamentary speechwriter by profession, and has a particular interest in young people’s mental health.

His debut pamphlet Knowing This Has Changed My Ending was published by Offord Road Books in 2018.

Ella Frears Ella Frears is a poet, writer and visual artist. She was awarded a place on the Jerwood/Arvon Mentoring Scheme 2016/17 and received a fully funded scholarship for the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway where she was Poet in Residence writing about the Cassini Space Mission. She has also just been shortlisted for the poetry category of the Manchester Writing Competition. Her pamphlet Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity is published by Burley Fisher Books.

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Wednesday 30 January

WRITING YOUR OWN CHILDHOOD Graham Caveney with Russell Christie With student writers: Arushi Vats and Russell Christie

Graham Caveney Graham Caveney will read from and discuss from his highly-acclaimed 2017 memoir, The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness, about his working-class childhood, love affair with music and books, and the abuse he suffered at the hands of a Catholic priest.

Caveney began his career writing book reviews for the New Musical Express in the 1980s before going on to write about music, film and literature for The Face, Arena, GQ, The Guardian, City Limits, The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.

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Wednesday 6 February

WRITING YOUR SELF, WRITING A PARENT Hannah Lowe & Lara Pawson with Dr Claire Lynch With student writers: Renee Dacres and Sansbrilla Sesay

Hannah Lowe

Lara Pawson

Hannah Lowe’s 2015 family memoir Long Time, No See is about her half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican immigrant father.

It was featured as Radio 4’s Book of the Week. Her first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection and was short-listed for the Forward, Aldeburgh and Seamus Heaney Best First Collection Prizes.

Lara Pawson’s life as a writer began in journalism, working for both print and broadcast media.

For stretches, she has lived in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, South Africa and Angola, working mainly for the BBC World Service. Her first book In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre (2014) was a mix of investigative journalism, history and memoir.

Her second collection, Chan, is published

by Bloodaxe. (2016). She is one of 20 Next Generation poets and is on the Creative Writing faculty at Brunel.

Claire Lynch Claire Lynch is Reader in Creative Writing at Brunel University London. Her publications include Cyber Ireland: Text, Image, Culture.

It was longlisted for the Orwell Prize and shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award. Her second book This Is the Place to Be, published in 2014, began life as a sound installation, but was expanded to become a fragmentary memoir.

It was shortlisted the Bread and Roses Award, the PEN Ackerley Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize.

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Wednesday 20 February

WRITING FOR CHILDREN Catherine Johnson with Bernardine Evaristo Catherine Johnson Catherine Johnson is a major, awardwinning YA author. Along with Malorie Blackman, she fills a literary space that is otherwise almost completely devoid of the lives of children of colour. She has been publishing young adult fiction for over twenty years with nineteen novels to her name. In 2018 she published YA novels, Freedom and Race to the Frozen North.

Her novels are typically cleverly plotted, well-researched page-turners, which are ideal for her young readership. As a screenwriter, Catherine co-wrote the feature film Bullet Boy, as well as several other dramas for BBC Radio 4 and the BBC soap Holby City.

She has received several awards and nominations for her work including The London Critics Circle Film Award, The British Independent Film Award, The Young Quills Award and nominations for the Carnegie Medal (twice) and the Prix Italia.

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Wednesday 27 February

HOW TO WRITE FICTION THAT TRAVELS Michelle Jana Chan with Bernardine Evaristo With student writers: Max Hallam, Jonathan Pizarro and Marie-Teresa Hanna

Michelle Jana Chan In the summer of 2018, Michelle Jana Chan published her first novel, Song, a sweeping historical epic, following one boy’s journey to find his fortune — from the rice fields of China to the rainforest of Guiana. An award-winning journalist, she is the Travel Editor of Vanity Fair.

She is also Contributing Editor at Conde Nast Traveller, presenter of the BBC’s Global Guide, and a writer for The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal and Travel & Leisure. She began her career at Newsweek magazine in New York in 1994, and continued to report for them from Xi’an, Beijing and Taipei. She then became the Asia-Pacific Editor for Deutsche Welle Radio in Cologne, followed by working as a news producer for CNN International in London.

She is the winner of the Travel Writer of the Year 2016; winner of the AITO Travel Writer of the Year 2016, and winner of the Consumer Magazine Feature of the Year Award at the Ecoventura LATA Media Awards 2016.

She is currently working on her second book, a fiction/non-fiction hybrid How to Colour the Future.

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Wednesday 6 March

Daljit Nagra with Iris Mauricio & Corey Tucker With student writers: Halima Begum, Iris Mauricio, Rachel Maloney and Corey Tucker

Daljit Nagra Daljit’s latest collection is British Museum (Faber 2018). His previous poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and they have been shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and twice for the TS Eliot Prize.

Daljit is also a PBS New Generation Poet.

His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the LRB and the TLS, and his journalism in the FT and Guardian.

He is the inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Radio 4 & 4 Extra, he presents the weekly Poetry Extra, and she serves on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.

Daljit is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel.

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Jaybird Live Literature

Catherine Johnson

Lara Pawson

Graham Caveney

Tony White

Michelle Jana Chan

Hannah Lowe

Daljit Nagra

The Department of Creative Writing at Brunel presents brilliant writers in

THE BRUNEL WRITERS SERIES January – March 2019 Hosted by Bernardine Evaristo, Professor of Creative Writing BANN226 of the Brunel Library Come along and be part of the conversation

Meet the authors | Live readings | Discussions | Performances Doors open at 5pm for Refreshments FREE but please book in advance: brunel.ac.uk/events DPS_4823 0119