News & Events
Sentinel Poetry Movement Competition
The vision of the Sentinel Poetry Movement is to build the world's premier community of writers and artists from all backgrounds, nationalities, race, religion, gender, age, sexuality, political or ideological affiliation. Their TRYangle Project Short Story Competition 2011 has a closing date of 10th November. It is for stories in the English Language up to 1,500 words long on the theme of domestic violence and abuse, and it is run in aid of The TRYangle Project - a Greenwich-based charity, with an aim to increase the safety of families who experience domestic violence and abuse. A third of your net entry fee will go to The TRYangle Project, and you could win cash prizes of: £150 (first), £75 (second), £40 (third), or 2 x £10 for High Commendation. The competition is judged by Kate Horsley. Learn more at www.excelforcharity.com
Grassroutes e-catalogue now ready
The first phase of the Arts Council’s Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing has now ended with the launch of the Grassroutes e-catalogue. The e-catalogue is an open access database of transcultural writing in Leicestershire with information about titles, authors, genre, year and place of publication. You can browse the entries or search for a particular author or title. If you know of any relevant titles that ought to be added, please contact Corinne Fowler. at . You can also send her your feedback or comments about the catalogue. Grassroutes promotes public knowledge and engagement with transcultural writing in Leicestershire that has been published since 1980. The e-catalogue is based on a survey that was conducted by Dr. Corinne Fowler in 2011. The survey yielded an unprecedented number of titles and suggests quite how prolific Leicestershire's writers have been.
Roger Bromley appointed as Visiting Professor at Lancaster University
Roger Bromley, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Honorary Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, has been appointed Visiting Professor with the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster, where he will work closely with the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. Author of the seminal work, Narratives for a New Belonging, Roger is currently working on a new book, Narratives of Hope? Conflict, Reconciliation and Cultural Forms (with reference to Bosnia, Rwanda and South Africa). He is also involved with a project on the representation of migration and displacement in cinematic forms, provisionally entitled People on the Move: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging. Professor Bromley says: ‘Having had a small part in the Moving Manchester project and some of the Glocal Imaginaries conference and of its outcomes, I am genuinely delighted and honored by this appointment, which will provide the opportunity to work more closely with the Department and the Centre. I look forward very much to the intellectual stimulus and fresh challenges offered by meeting with colleagues and students, planning new projects and sharing in research initiatives.’
Ugandan Writer Shortlisted for Caine Prize
Ugandan writer Beatrice Lamwaka has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing - one of the leading prizes open to African writers. Beatrice has participated in both the British Council 'Crossing Borders' programme, directed by Professor Graham Mort from Lancaster. and the recent 'Lancaster/Uganda Friends Writing Project' organised by the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and funded by the Lancaster University Friends Programme. Monica Arak de Nyeko, also a participant on Crossing Borders, won the prize in 2004. Graham Mort is currently Guest of Honour at the Femrite 'Reading Uganda' literature festival in Kampala, where he has been featured in The Observer newspaper.
Travel, Writing, and the Ethics of Observation, a Workshop and Seminar at Lancaster University, was held on Thursday June 16th. This free one-day event featured a generative writing workshop, a projected photographic exhibition and presentations from Dr. Corinne Fowler and Dr. Harry Whitehead (University of Leicester) and photographer Richard Hanson. Read full details of the conference.
Bode Asiyanbi wins African Performance playwriting competition
We are delighted to announce that Nigerian writer Bode Asiyanbi has won the 2011 BBC African Performance playwriting competition. Bode is just completing his first year of the Lancaster Distance Leaarning MA in Creative Writing. He is a recipient of one of our International Scholarships for 2010-12. It is the second time he has won the accolade - he was selected as the winner in 2005. This year's winning play, Shattered, addresses the subject of rape, exposing in a powerful way the silence that often surrounds this crime. This year's judge, Ugandan American actor and writer Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, said, "Shattered, for me, was the most layered story technically speaking and the most suspenseful...It dealt with a theme that is being wrestled with not just on the African continent but globally, and it did it in a way that...shed light and heart on what is a complex issue."
Stepping Stones Nigeria: Short Story Competition
This short story competition for amateur writers is part of an effort to raise £5000 for Stepping Stones Nigeria. A panel of judges including award winning novelist Goretti Kyomuhendo will select the three winning short stories. Short stories of no more than 1000 words are invited with the opening or closing line: ‘In the distance stood Mount Kilimanjaro’. Deadline 1st August 2011. Download a poster giving full details of the competition.
Two March Events
Distinguished Guardian international journalist Gary Younge spoke about his new book 'Who Are We: and why should it matter in the 21st century?' on March 8th at a lunchtime seminar in IAS organised by the centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. The event was chaired by Dr. Lindsey Moore and led to a wide discussion about culture and identity attended by about 60 members of staff and students. Download the poster for the Gary Younge event.
Points of Departure. Bermudan Novelist Angela Barry read from her novel 'Goree: point of departure' on March 16th IAS MR2/3. She was joined by Jeremy Poynting to discuss 25 years of production from Peepal Tree Press and the event was chaired by Professor Roger Bromley, author of 'Narratives for a New Belonging'. Download the poster for Points of Departure.
International Radio Playwriting Competition 2011
The biennial International Radio Playwriting Competition is run by the BBC World Service and the British Council and is now in its twenty second year.
It is a competition for anyone resident outside Britain, to write a 60-minute radio drama for up to six characters. There are two categories: one for writers with English as their first language and one for writers with English as their second language. The two winners will come to London and see their play made into a full radio production, which will then be broadcast on the BBC World Service. They will also each receive a £2,500 prize and there are also prizes for the runners-up. The play must be in English, unpublished and must not have been previously produced in any medium. Deadline: 31 March 2011.
To enter your script, and find out more about the competition, visit the BBC World Service website .
Two Forthcoming Film Events
Stepping Stones Nigeria invites you to attend the Lancaster screening of:
‘The Fake Prophet’
The Dukes Theatre (Moor Lane, Lancaster LA1 1NN), Friday the 26th of November, 7pm. ADMISSION FREE
‘The Fake Prophet’ is a ground breaking new Nollywood film which has been made in collaboration with the child rights charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria. It powerfully encapsulates many major child rights issues that are facing Nigerian society today. These include: child witchcraft accusations; child exploitation and abuse by fraudulent pastors; child trafficking, and child abandonment.
This film by the renowned Nollywood director, Teco Benson, is a tale of drama, suspense and intrigue and aims to counter-balance many other Nollywood films which have exacerbated the belief in child witches, and subsequently encouraged the abuse and abandonment of children. We hope that the film will stimulate debate about the issues of child witchcraft accusations, abuse and trafficking and challenge current abusive practices which prevail in some parts of Nigeria. We therefore anticipate a huge reaction once the film has been released in Nigeria. Followed by a Q&A session with SSN staff members. If you would like to pre-order tickets to this event or for more information please visit The Dukes webpage or contact Justine Atkinso. Watch the trailer on YouTube.
Filming Against the Odds: 50 years of filming in Independent Africa
Conference in association with London African Film Festival and BAFTA
10.00am, 27 November 2010 - 5.00pm, 28 November 2010
Indaba on 50 Years of Film in Independent Africa, African Media Centre, University of Westminster, London, UK / LONDON AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL. University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS.
Mambo Writers Circles was established in 2005 at a workshop organized by the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ). The initiative reduced in membership when BWAZ Gweru chapter became defunct about six months after the launch of the project. 2010 has been dubbed a year of re-launch following the returning of other members from economical and political exiles.
However a few dedicated writers remained and adhere to the principles of the initiative. There is a periodic writer’s clinic, members' conduct reviewing and readings of each other’s work - mainly poetry and prose. 
To date the organization has organized many writers’ workshops in Gweru which were facilitated by Mambo Press and individual published writers. Mambo Writers Circle has participated in public readings in Gweru and Bulawayo including the recent one which was attended by John Eppel, a prolific Zimbabwean contemporary writer. Mambo Writers Circles has managed to secure space in a local weekly community newspaper to publish poetry under Poetry Circles.
Mambo Writers Circle has survived without recognition of the general public, but is powerfully driven by the principle of promoting a reading culture.
The photos show Drew Shaw, a visiting research fellow and lecturer at Midlands State University, and John Eppel, a prolific Zimbabwean writer, with some of the Mambo poets at a recent public reading.
Films of Migration Stories
Literature Northwest filmed a set of Manchester readings recently for YouTube, and some of them featured readings from Migration Stories (Crocus Books, March 2010). See our page featuring four films, with readings by Muli Amaye, Kim Wiltshire, Maya Choudry and Sue Stern. "Migration Stories is a fantastic collection of short fiction that gets right under the skin of the experience and what it means for individuals. It tells stories that are rarely heard, whether they be set inside a grotty bedsit, a container making its way to the UK, or a dance class offering an emotional outlet to a person cut off from their family ties..."
AIMING HIGHER: Poetry and Fiction: 25-30 October 2010
Ty Newydd National Writers' Centre is offering a week-long course that will be particularly helpful for writers who would like to apply for entry to postgraduate creative writing courses. Sara Maitland and Graham Mort (plus guest writer, novelist Tristan Hughes). Residential: £525 (single); £450 (shared) . In partnership with Lancaster University. Whether you write poetry or prose, and whatever your thematic focus, this course aims to give you a new ambition in finding ways of developing your work to a higher standard. From the lyric poem to prose fiction, it will explore techniques in the use of language and structural effects that establish the vital relationship between writers and readers. Its focus will be on the way that readers ‘construct’ the experience of the finished work and the ways that writers can anticipate, understand and control this process. Finding common ground between literary forms, it will be of particular – though not exclusive - interest to those writers who are considering developing their work through a Higher Education course and will feature seminars and workshops that use methods from those programmes. Sounds serious? Don’t worry: we aim to have fun and produce plenty of new work!
Lancaster/Leicester University Collaboration
Researchers at Lancaster and Leicester Universities will be collaborating from January 2011 on a new literature project – Grassroutes - to document the work and influence of migrant writers in Leicester. The project is funded by the Arts Council of England and will be led by Dr. Corinne Fowler of Leicester University (former researcher on Lancaster’s AHRC- funded Moving Manchester project) in collaboration with Dr. Graham Mort. The project will lead to an electronic catalogue, a new online Writers Gallery, a £1,000 creative writing commission, a new exhibition and a blog on the Literature Network. Dr. Kate Horsley will also participate in the project, mounting new resources on Lancaster’s Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, to complement existing provision. See our Grassroutes page.
Conference 2010: ‘Africa: Cultural Translations’
The ‘Africa: Cultural Translations’ conference took place from 21-22 May 2010 at Lancaster University. It was organised by Lancaster University African Studies Group in association with the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. One of the main events on the afternoon of the first day way a reading by Goretti Kyomuhendo and a discussion with Graham Mort in the Chair. Click here to read the whole of the Conference Programme. Read more about Goretti.
Friends Funding for Lancaster/Uganda Women’s Writing Link
Dr Graham Mort has been successful in his bid to the Lancaster University Friends Programme with a proposal for linking Ugandan women to postgraduate mentors here in the UK, who will deliver monthly online tutorials in response to their work. The project will enable PhD students to widen their teaching experience and will be an invaluable developmental experience for the African women writers. It will also leave an archive on the website of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research of interest to other researchers in Creative Writing and in African literature and society. The project is being developed in association with Femrite in Kampala.
The Wasafiri New Writing Prize
The Wasafiri New Writing Prize is now open for entries. Now in its second year the Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open to anyone worldwide who has not published a complete book. We are looking for creative submissions in one of three categories: Poetry, Ficiton and Life Writing. To enter simply fill in the entry form and send it to us with your entry and a fee of UK Sterling £5.00. The closing date is 30 July 2010. £300 will be awarded to the winner of each category and their winning entry will be published in Wasafiri. The application form can be downloaded from the Wasafiri website at http://www.wasafiri.org/prizes.asp.
International Student Writing Competition
The Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA) is pleased to announce the inaugural International Student Writing Competition. The competition, the first of its kind to be sponsored by NCLA, aims to attract outstanding work which captures the day-to-day lives of international students living and studying in the UK (1st Prize: £1000; 2nd Prize: £500; 3rd prize: £200). Winners to be selected by award-winning writer, Jackie Kay. Best stories to appear in an anthology in 2010. Deadline: 21st June, 2010. Students from anywhere in the world can enter, providing they are studying at a UK university, or have graduated within the past two years. For competition rules and further information about making a submission, please visit the website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ncla/projects/competitions/isssc/
Regarding War: Image/Text:
10.30am - 6.00pm Thursday, 18th June 2009, Conference Centre, Lancaster University
This one-day event brings together a photographer, a filmmaker, a contemporary writer and a literary critic to discuss the themes of conflict, displacement and alienation in the context of the Centre’s Regarding War project. The conference will include an exhibition of Hanson’s photographs, a creative writing workshop run by Graham Mort and the work of two filmmakers who are exploring similar themes, Dictynna Hood and Sami Khan. Read online invitation and click here for a full report of the June 2009 Trans-Scriptions event.
Radiophonics Phase II
The British Council-funded Radiophonics project, led by Dr. Graham Mort of Lancaster University's Department of English and Creative Writing, has now entered its second phase in Nigeria. Stories written last year in workshops in Kano, Enuga, Abuja and Lagos and focused on key social and political issues, are now being broadcast on Inspiration FM, Lagos, in the ‘Under the Sun’ series. Click here for further information.
Lancaster University's Distance Learning MA in Creative Writing: International Scholarship Offer
Lancaster University is expanding its highly successful Distance Learning MA in Creative Writing, allowing the admission of a new cohort of 18-20 students for the academic year 2009-10. We are delighted to announce that we will also be able to offer two International Scholarships (worth £8,000 over two years) to applicants who need assistance in financing their studies and who are resident outside the EU. Click here for further details.
Creative-critical synergies: CTWR Research Event, 27th February 2009
You are invited to attend Creative-critical synergies on 27th February, 3-6 pm, IAS MR3. This is the first of three seminars for which we have 'Research Centre Seminar Series' funding. Our aim is to initiate cross-disciplinary exchanges by having members of the Centre (and other interested members of FASS) give presentations on different forms of research (theory-based, practice-based), methodological approaches and thematic focuses. There will be ten speakers from six different departments, and we are hoping for wide-ranging discussion of possible avenues of collaborative research amongst Centre members. Click here for full seminar details.
The Sankofa Center for African Dance & Culture: a Unique Artistic Internship
The Sankofa Center for African Dance & Culture, directed by Ronnie Shaw (University of California Los Angeles), is an American arts-based HIV/AIDS education, prevention, testing, and treatment internship program working in Ghana, West Africa under the National AIDS Control Programme. Those with a professed interest in the artistic expression of dance, drama, music, & art merged with public health, nursing, and social welfare are encouraged to apply to the Sankofa Center program, which, merges culturally appropriate preventative education with modern medical HIV testing & treatment. To learn more about the Sankofa Center program and to view a 5 minute documentary on their efforts in Africa please click on their website. See also our links section.
New African Studies group at Lancaster
The Lancaster University African Studies Group has recently been established to bring together researchers with a shared interest in African Studies, broadly conceived. The reading group will be meeting during term time to discuss a range of texts, and currently includes academics and doctoral students from History, Linguistics, Geography, Psychology, DELC, Theatre Studies and English Literature. If you would be interested in joining the reading group, please contact Charlotte Baker.
Launch of Online Exhibition: Regarding War
Regarding War: Image/Text is a new research project funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies and directed by members of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. The images and texts displayed in our online exhibition communicate the experience of contemporary wars from perspectives in the North of England. Reflected in these new commissions of photographer Richard Hanson and writer Fadia Faqir are the ways in which contemporary armed conflicts touch individuals and communities. Click here to visit the Regarding War exhibition.
The Speechless Freedom of Expression Tour
At the end of October, Lancaster hosted two events offered by a group of outstanding visiting poets from South East Asia centred around the ideas of the Speechless Freedom of Expression tour. An evening of live new international poetry was held at the Nuffield Theatre on Thursday 23rd October. The Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research additionally arranged for the poets to visit the Department of English & Creative Writing on Friday 24th October. A well-attended lunchtime writing and performance workshop was given for the Department's Creative Writing students. Click here for more information and photographs of the event.
Lindsey Moore, Arab, Muslim, Woman
Lindsey Moore's Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film was published by Routledge in May 2008. Given a long history of representation by others, what themes and techniques do Arab Muslim women writers, filmmakers and visual artists foreground in their presentation of postcolonial experience? Lindsey Moore's groundbreaking book demonstrates ways in which women appropriate textual and visual modes of representation, often in cross-fertilizing ways, in challenges to Orientalist / colonialist, nationalist, Islamist, and 'multicultural' paradigms. She provides an accessible but theoretically-informed analysis by foregrounding tropes of vision, visibility and voice; post-nationalist melancholia and mother/daughter narratives; transformations of 'homes and harems'; and border crossings in time, space, language, and media.
Trans-Scriptions: writing . culture . location
Migration, Memory & Mood in 'Multicultural' Britain
The Centre's new series of Trans-Scriptions began with an event held in County South Lecture Theatre, Lancaster University, on 1st May 2008. "Migration, Memory & Mood in 'Multicultural' Britain" brought together a contemporary writer, a sociologist and a visual artist and filmmaker to discuss the themes of migration, memory, and mood in 'multicultural' Britain. Dr Anne-Marie Fortier opened the programme with a paper on recent constructions of multicultural Britain. Click here for more information and photographs of the event.
New Developments in Radiophonics
In November 2007 Radiophonics, led by Graham Mort, was extended to an educational phase, with workshops involving teachers from 17 secondary schools in and around Kampala. Following workshops it is intended to mount a writing competition to broadcast the best three short stories. In March 2008, Graham led a group of UK-based writers (Mike Harris, Simon Brett and Biyi Bandele) to initiate the first phase of the project in Nigeria, where 48 writers took part, each workshop producing a portfolio of new writing for radio. In May 2008 feedback from the workshops will be used to plan collaboration with a Nigerian broadcast partner and to develop the project over a three-year period. Click here for more information on the Radiophonics project.
Crossing Borders Participant Chosen for Nordic Africa Institute Residency
Tolu Ogunlesi of Nigeria was recently selected by the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden, as its 2008 Guest Writer. This entails a three month residency at the Institute (between September and November 2008). Click here for the press release. Tolu is an emerging short fiction, essay writer and poet who juggles his job as a pharmacist in Lagos, Nigeria, with writing. He was a 2005/2006 Fellow on the British Council Crossing Borders creative writing programme, and a participant British Council Beyond Borders Festival.
The Death of Archie Markham
E.A. (Archie) Markham died in Paris on 23rd March, Easter day. Everyone who was at the Centre’s second Trans-Scriptions event in March 2006 will remember the humour and warmth of Archie’s reading. Peter Fraser, in The Guardian obituary, writes, “Archie Markham, who has died of a heart attack aged 68, was a superb poet and writer of short stories. His work was characterised by subtlety, wit, intelligence, playfulness, resistance to all orthodoxies and a devotion to the craft of writing. In 2002 his collection A Rough Climate was shortlisted for the Poetry Book Society's TS Eliot prize.” (The Guardian 26th April 2008)
FASS Virtual Research Training: Pilot Project
The Virtual Research Environment provided as part of the Centre's Postgraduate Portal has become the core of a Faculty-wide initiative. We are very pleased to announce that we have received support from the FASS Research Training Initiatives Fund for a new programme of interdisciplinary virtual Research Training. The pilot will run in Summer Term. We are hoping to involve a selection of FASS PhD students from different disciplines, and are recruiting volunteers from each year of study. Click here for full details.
Regarding War: Image/Text
We are delighted to announce that our bid for IAS Incubation Programme funding for ‘Regarding War’ has been successful. The project will be developed under the aegis of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research in collaboration with LICA. It will produce an archive of creative imagery and writing that reflects upon the experience of contemporary war(s) from perspectives in the North-West of England. Click here to read more.
Greater Middle East and Islamic Studies Network
Click here to see the schedule for the Lent term for the new interdisciplinary 'Greater Middle East and Islamic Studies Network' seminar series, a diverse and thought-provoking series of discussions.
Graham Mort wins The Bridport Prize
Graham Mort has won first prize in the prestigious international writing competition, The Bridport Prize, for his short story, "The Prince". His story is printed in the Bridport Prize 2007 Anthology. The 26 poems and short stories included in the anthology were chosen by Don Paterson and Tracey Chevalier from thousands of submissions. Read more...
Zambian 'Crossing Borders' writer wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize
Zambia's Ellen Banda-Aaku has won the £2,000 Commonwealth short story prize for her story Sozi's Box, about the thoughts of a young girl at her brother's funeral. The prize was established 11 years ago with the aim of increasing appreciation between different Commonwealth cultures. It is proving to be a nursery for star young writers, including the bestselling Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun. Ellen was a participant on the British Council/Lancaster University African writers project 'Crossing Borders' designed and led by Dr. Graham Mort.
Graham Mort's Visibility (September 2007)
Review in The Guardian of Graham Mort's Visibility: "Though not as well known as he deserves outside poetry's tight-knit circle, within it, Graham Mort is acknowledged as one of contemporary verse's most accomplished practitioners. This book, which showcases a selection of poems from five earlier collections alongside a generous tranche of new work, perfectly exhibits the blend of formal scrupulousness, sensory evocation and intellectual rigour that has shaped his reputation." Read more...
Crossing Borders participant wins Caine Prize
Monica Arac de Nyeko, a Ugandan participant on the British Council/Lancaster University Crossing Borders mentoring project for African writers, has just won the prestigious Caine Prize for African short fiction. Crossing Borders was designed by Graham Mort of Lancaster's Department of English & Creative Writing. Further details of the award appear in the following link: The Guardian.
Graham Mort wins International Award for Excellence in the arts
Graham Mort has been selected as the winner of the International Award for Excellence in the area of the arts, for his paper “The Reflexive Muse: Online Creative Writing Development in Africa and the UK Academy” (a paper delivered at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival, 15-18 August 2006, and published in The International Journal of the Arts in Society).
Fadia Faqir publishes My Name is Salma
Fadia Faqir is a Jordanian/British writer and a defender of human rights, especially women's rights in the Arab world. She is the author of two other novels, Nisanit and Pillars of Salt. She came to Britain in 1984 to study creative writing at Lancaster University under David Craig. In 1985 she was awarded an MA in Creative Writing by Lancaster, and in 1990 the University of East Anglia awarded her the first PhD in Critical and Creative Writing. Brought up in Amman she now lives with her husband in Durham. My Name is Salma was published in May 2007 by Transworld Publishers. Click here to buy My Name is Salma on Amazon.
Abigail Zammit's Voices from the Land of the Trees
Abigail Zammit, who is from Malta, was awarded an MA in Creative Writing by Lancaster University in 2006. Her new book, Voices from the Land of Trees, is forthcoming in June 2007, published by Smokestack Books. Its poems, which tell the story of Guatemala's thirty-six years of civil war, "are spoken by many different voices - mothers, missionaries, children, soldiers, guerrillas, Indians, students and journalists - each struggling to be heard above the sound of gunfire and weeping, each trying to break the silence. Voices from the Land of Trees is a work of bold historical imagination and sympathy, a contribution to the process of recovering these terrible events from official silence and collective amnesia."
Open Day - 31st May 2007
David Dabydeen was the guest reader at a very well-attended all-day event, inaugurating the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and showcasing the work done on such related projects as Crossing Borders, Radiophonics and Moving Manchester. Click here for posters and more information.
Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, County College, Lancaster University, LA1 4YD, UK
