All members of the Creative Writing Research group work across a diverse range of genres and praxis, cultivating distinctness and originality in a field that is continually changing and adapting. We share a commitment to the history of genres and writing, as well as to contemporary trends such as experimental non-fiction and cross-genre work. We specialise in unique aspects of creative writing such as the American novella, writing for music, vernacular literature, crime writing, and experimental poetry. We are all writers of national and international reputation who have won a range of awards and fellowships.
Over the years, the research group has very successfully led a number of students through practice-based PhDs to publication. Our unique PhD community has worked on a range of subjects from historical fiction, experimental prose, political writing, holocaust writing, contemporary adaptation, science fiction, lyric poetry, creative biography, young adult fiction and poetics. We are always keen to hear from prospective PhD students interested in working on projects which engage with our own areas of specialism.
To learn more about studying with us as a research student, visit our Creative Writing and Practice-based PhD page.
Members of the group
Award-winning prose writers and innovative novelists
The group includes a number of award-winning prose writers and innovative novelists.
Douglas Cowie is the author of Owen Noone and the Marauder, which The Times described as ‘a sparky debut novel … with enormous assurance and offbeat charm.’ His most recent novel, Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago, fictionalises the relationship between Nelson Algren and Simone de Beauvoir.
Ben Markovits has published nine novels, including You Don’t Have to Live Like This, awarded the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Adam Roberts, in contrast, is a prolific science fiction and fantasy novelist and an expert in the field, having written two critical books on the genre. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Nikita Lalwani’s Man Booker-longlisted and Costa-shortlisted debut Gifted centres around a child prodigy growing up in Wales in the 1980s and was dramatized for BBC Radio 4. Her third novel, You People, was published by Penguin in 2020. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Anna Whitwham's debut novel, Boxer Handsome, which focused on the marginal experiences of London's boxing communities, was New Statesman's Book of the Year, 2015.
Dr Amber Lascelles is Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literature in the Department of English at Royal Holloway University of London. Her research considers how contemporary fiction of the African diaspora enables new ways of conceiving the relationship between race, embodiment and literature. She is especially interested in how literature intervenes in Black feminist discourse and concerns in a range of texts by African, Black British, and Anglophone Caribbean women writers, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dionne Brand, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bernardine Evaristo and Zadie Smith. Her research and writing has been published in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, the Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Wasafiri. Previously, she was the Research Associate for the Wellcome-Trust funded project Black Health and the Humanities at the University of Bristol, which involved developing a network of scholars working in this area.
Karina Lickorish Quinn is a novelist and short storyist. Her debut novel The Dust Never Settles was described by Paul Lynch, 2023 Booker Prize winner, as ‘a mesmerising feat of imagination and a masterful debut’ and was short-listed for a Premio Cálamo. She was featured in the first ever anthology of British Latinx writers. Karina is currently finishing her second novel, The River Dies Quietly, for which she was awarded an Arts Council grant.
Poets
Poetry is equally central to our writing community and the approaches our poets take are just as diverse.
Sean Borodale works as a poet and artist. He was a Granta New Poet in 2012 and his debut, Bee Journal, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Book Award. His latest collection, Inmates, was published in 2020.
Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain is a contemporary poet and critic who has published two books of criticism on contemporary feminism and queer poetry as well as three poetry works, most recently, *retroviral.
Will Montgomery has a long-standing involvement, as critic and practitioner, in contemporary experimental music, field recording and sound art.
Redell Olsen is a poet who also works with text and visual media in bookworks, film and performance. Her most recent works include a film: 'Now Circa (1918)' that reflects on the parallels between the struggle for female suffrage and the protests of women in our contemporary era.
John Regan is a widely-published poet and poetics specialist working primarily on the eighteenth century.
Playwriters and screenwriters
The department also excels in its research commitment to other genres, notably playwriting and screenwriting.
Nicholas Pierpan is a multi-award-winning playwright and screenwriter, combining his knowledge of classical forms and the history of literature with the stage. Synthesising poetry and drama, his recent play William Wordsworth was produced by English Touring Theatre and The Theatre by The Lake in 2017. He was awarded a fellowship by Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin to participate in the ‘Serial Eyes’ writing programme, 2020.
