Feb 2019 · Blog
The View from my Window
My window faces north. On winter mornings, the house’s shadow draws close as the low sun lights up the neighbours’ gardens. On the fence close by a wood pigeon has been keeping me company…
Read more →writing
Essays, book news and events — a single feed, filterable by type.
Dec 2015 · Blog
The Making of Books
I teach writing and I write. That’s what pays my way in life. Recently I wondered what is most important to me – is it teaching, writing, academia? The answer was quite clear. Books.…
Read more →May 2015 · Blog
The role of narrative and argument
My big writing projects can take decades. I’m not slow, but redraft a great deal. Of late, I’ve felt a desire to clean the slate. Two novels are ready to go, and a narrative poem.…
Read more →May 2015 · Blog
Will Self and the Creative writing PhD
In his piece on the Death of the Novel in The Guardian, Will Self comments on his own PhD Creative Writing student: Creative writing programmes burgeoning throughout our universities are ‘a self-perpetuating and self-financing literary set-aside scheme…
Read more →May 2014 · Blog
Barbara Kingsolver’s FLIGHT BEHAVIOUR – a grand model for the environmental novel
I’m tracking through a lot of books as I tackle my own nonfiction project, on climate change and environmental law. Novel reading offers some light relief of an evening – Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour nimbly blends both…
Read more →