English Literature & Creative Writing at Lancaster University

English Literature & Creative Writing at Lancaster University Official page for the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Past, present and future students welcome!

Official page for the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Exciting news! Poet and Lancaster graduate Martha Sprackland will be in conversation with Andy Tate at The Priory, 2-4pm...
24/09/2026

Exciting news! Poet and Lancaster graduate Martha Sprackland will be in conversation with Andy Tate at The Priory, 2-4pm on 31 October.

God in the Dark: Literature Ancient and Modern

At 2pm on All Hallows Eve in the Military Chapel, the celebrated poet Martha Sprackland (Lancaster alumna) will talk about, and read from, her new Penguin translation of the famous 16th-century mystical text Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross, and Professor Andy Tate of the University of Lancaster will explore more generally the question of writing and reading in the dark.

There will be time for questions, and tea/coffee (free) will be served before the event from 1.45 and during the break.

This event is free and all welcome. Chair: John Schad ([email protected])

Calling all journalists. We'd like to let you know about a free training opportunity in Lancaster.From bottomless brunc...
23/09/2026

Calling all journalists. We'd like to let you know about a free training opportunity in Lancaster.

From bottomless brunch to Michelin stars: What puts you off, and what draws you in?

THRIVE, Food Futures' community magazine based in Lancaster, is running a workshop on how to level up your food writing with Georgia Tindale, a local freelance journalist and writer. Tuesday 29th September. 5.30-6.30

Cost: free! The Cornerstone Sulyard Street LA1 1PX Tea and biscuits provided.

To book your place, email [email protected] or just turn up!

Thrive offer monthly free training sessions. Forthcoming dates are included on the poster.

Visit foodfutures.org.uk/thrive to have a browse through the latest issue.

Dr Tajinder Singh Hayer's 2016 play, North Country, is being revived at the Ilkley Playhouse 24-26 September. It's a pos...
18/09/2026

Dr Tajinder Singh Hayer's 2016 play, North Country, is being revived at the Ilkley Playhouse 24-26 September. It's a post-apocalyptic piece that explores community and belonging in Bradford during the long decades after a pandemic.

It will be performed by community actors from West Yorkshire:
https://ilkleyplayhouse.co.uk/IlkleyPlayhouse.dll/WhatsOn?Film=6300456

You can also hear Taj on episode 57 of the Fantasy Book Swap podcast with Ali Baker, where he shares his love of Elen Caldecott's novel, The Blackthorn Branch.

You can find Fantasy Book Swap on your podcast player.

Great to see our students smashing it last night . has just completed an MA in creative writing and is starting the se...
17/09/2026

Great to see our students smashing it last night .

has just completed an MA in creative writing and is starting the second year of her BA. They both shared new poems.

The wordarium is a monthly open mic night at The Gregson, which aims to support new writers in a warm and inclusive space.

Next weekend is the 5th Morecambe Poetry Festival, with a fantastic lineup, including Dr John Cooper Clarke, Salena Godd...
14/09/2026

Next weekend is the 5th Morecambe Poetry Festival, with a fantastic lineup, including Dr John Cooper Clarke, Salena Godden, Patience Agbabi, Henry Normal and Jackie Kay. Many events at the beautiful and historic Winter Gardens.

And many events at The Kings Arms, including late night open mics.

There are free events, such as Poetry for the People in the Arndale on Sunday 29th 1-4pm, as well as weekend tickets and single tickets from Skiddle.

https://www.skiddle.com/g/morecambe-poetry-festival-/

See the full line up Poetry Festival on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082955481461&locale=en_GB

We continue our publishing news with a story published by our PhD student Rob Cambbell-Roscoe, who is also a musician ....
10/09/2026

We continue our publishing news with a story published by our PhD student Rob Cambbell-Roscoe, who is also a musician . It's great to see these two worlds coming together with Rob publishing his auto-fictional short story, 'Our of the Woods' on his favourite music webzine, Americana UK.

You can read it here: https://americana-uk.com/americana-stories-jack-roscoe-out-of-the-woods

AND Rob has taken over organsing our online short story reading group, which is open to all Lancaster students. More about that soon...

We start the academic new year with more great publishing news. Our two PhD students, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ and Lauren O’D...
09/09/2026

We start the academic new year with more great publishing news. Our two PhD students, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ and Lauren O’Donoghue have new short stories in the anthology Brutalist Ghost Stories alongside their PhD supervisor and creative writing subject lead, Professor Jenn Ashworth. It also includes our graduate, Daisy Johnson!

Follow our writers here:

Published by Manchester based and edited by , who gave a talk to our students last year, Brutalist Ghost Stories will be published on 15th October. Pre-order for the special price of £9 + p&p from .

Confingo says:

From universities and theatres to car parks and substations, brutalist architecture is found throughout Britain. Its mysterious buildings brood on our skylines, haunting our towns and cities with their vision of a future which never arrived. Vast, angular, imposing, these structures are some of the country’s most distinctive and underappreciated landmarks – and often feel like some of its darkest.

Brutalist Ghost Stories brings together seventeen of the finest writers of contemporary fiction to respond to these buildings through the form of the ghost story.

Featuring stories by Jenn Ashworth, Beth Barker, RZ Baschir, Naomi Booth, Gosia Buzzanca, Jeremy Dyson, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, Thom Evans, Rachael Fulton, David Gaffney, Jessie Greengrass, Daisy Johnson, Amy Lord, Lauren O’Donoghue, Holly Pester, Nicholas Royle and Robert Shearman.

Well done to our current Creative Writing MA (DLMA) student, Jessica Tillings. Her poetry chapbook, Moults, has been pub...
08/09/2026

Well done to our current Creative Writing MA (DLMA) student, Jessica Tillings. Her poetry chapbook, Moults, has been published by Salo Press. These are poems that Jessica has been developing as part of her MA portfolio.

You can buy Moults here: https://www.salopress.com/store/moults-jessica-tillings/

Moults is a meditation on transformation and preservation, and of the poet’s own becoming through trauma, motherhood and late neurodivergent diagnosis. With an emotional strangeness, these are poems concerned with the death of things; poems which explore and play with memory, the dizziness of nostalgia and the grounding of hindsight; poems which question what is lost and what is retained in the cycle of an evolving identity. They are written from the earth as much as they are written from the body.

With a raw and brutal energy, Moults burrows into lepidopterology’s viscous erotics and the aesthetics of institutionalised madness to explore the folk horror qualities of motherhood. Fluttering on the monstrous borderland between teeming life and putrid death, these poems are feral charms and mutilated spells for shedding our human skin and becoming animal. – Nell Perry

An auricular poetics of transformation. The linguistic charge never dips in these poems, attuned as they are to the mulch of existence, and much beyond. Tillings creates a rhapsody that arrives via listening in. ‘The HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE and the HEART, by way of the BREATH’ as Olson suggested. It’s myopic to consider this a debut publication (though it is). Moults reveals the vision of a poet who has been ready to publish for years. Expansive yet anatomically precise, poignant yet written in with flair, here the body is the poem, ‘digested / broken down / spit- gliding-beneath-the-gentle-ridgepinch-of-tongue’. Moults is both feast and gift. – James Byrne

Leaf Journal' (one of Lancaster's in-house academic journals) publishes scholarly writing on children's and YA literatur...
07/09/2026

Leaf Journal' (one of Lancaster's in-house academic journals) publishes scholarly writing on children's and YA literature. And we are hugely excited that Volume Four contains work from TWO of our students.

Edward Davies' 'Crossing the Line' began life as a wonderful 3rd year reflective essay, which became a conference paper and is now an article. .at.daybreak

Beth Train-Brown's ‘I Need To Learn – Am Learning’ was also once a critical reflection, but this time on our MA programme, before becoming a paper and then an article. Beth Train-Brown's ‘I Need To Learn – Am Learning’ was also once a critical reflection, but this time on our MA programme, before becoming a paper and then an article.

We are very proud indeed to support our students' intellectual and creative journeys.

Read the articles at: LeafJournal.org

Our PhD student Sameeya Maqbool will be sharing her PhD research at The Creative-Critical and the Global South online Sy...
05/09/2026

Our PhD student Sameeya Maqbool will be sharing her PhD research at The Creative-Critical and the Global South online Symposium on Monday 7th September, organised by Professor Abir Hamdar from at Durham University.

So, you can tune in online and will be of interest to creative-critical scholars and researchers into the Global South.

Symposium | The Creative-Critical and the Global South
Monday, 7 September | 10:30 am – 3:30 pm (UK time)

In the last decade or so, we have witnessed a remarkable shift in how scholarly research and academic writing are carried out with the emergence of what is now known as the “creative-critical”. From literary writing to visual outputs and performative pieces, the boundary between what is “critical” in creative outputs and what is “creative” in critical work has become fluid.

This symposium seeks to address the relative lack of attention given to creative-critical work from and about the Global South, exploring locally informed approaches, alternative forms, themes and methods emerging from these contexts.

To register, please visit the Symposium teams event page or scan the QR code in the image.

For any queries, contact Abir Hamdar at [email protected].

ad616f21-e54d-413b-8d78-5e0cf0df1fc4@7250d88b-4b68-4529-be44-d59a2d8a6f94" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/ad616f21-e54d-413b-8d78-5e0cf0df1fc4@7250d88b-4b68-4529-be44-d59a2d8a6f94

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Department Of English Literature And Creative Writing, County College, Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA14YD

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Monday 9am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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