Hudd LitFest – Award-winning writers undertake PhD by Publication
Celebrated writers (l-r) Anna Ralph, Stephen May and Amanda Hodgkinson
Mon, 27 Feb 2017 15:22:00 GMT
Celebrated writers Anna Ralph, Stephen May and Amanda Hodgkinson talk about their work– Hudds Lit Fest, Saturday 4 March, 2pm to 5pm
THREE leading authors taking part in a Huddersfield Literature Festival event on Saturday 4 March have produced award-winning novels and plays that are highly diverse. But what they have in common is that they are working towards doctorates at the University of Huddersfield.
The University is one of very few that offers creative writers the opportunity to achieve the qualification known as PhD by publication. They gain the distinction by having a portfolio of published work and then writing a detailed appraisal of it, under the supervision of lecturers.
The latest cohort of writers to take the opportunity to earn a doctorate based on their body of work consists of Anna Ralph, Stephen May and Amanda Hodgkinson. They will discuss their writing at a free event, entitled The University of Huddersfield Presents, taking place on 4 March (2-5pm).
It is one of the key contributions made by the University to the 2017 Huddersfield Literature Festival. Taking part is creative writing lecturer Dr Simon Crump – a published author himself – and he has been one of supervisors of PhDs by publication.
He explained that candidates must be established writers with a track record of publication, generally in literary fiction. “Basically, they are people who have proved their worth as an author already. They then have to write an exegesis about their work that places it in a critical context and demonstrates its originality and distinctiveness.”
Although PhD by Publication is an established process for academic staff with a body of published research, opportunities for creative writers to attain a doctorate based on their work are very rare, and the University of Huddersfield programme has now attracted three cohorts of distinguished authors. The process – supervised by lecturers from both the creative writing and the English literature staff – takes about 12 months.
At the 4 March event, the first author to read from her work and to field audience question is Anna Ralph, whose first novel The Floating Island (2008) won a Betty Trask Best Debut Award from the Society of Authors. Her second novel Before I Knew Him (2009) was shortlisted for a Good Housekeeping Good Read Award and drew upon the themes Anna had begun to explore in the first book: love, sexuality, memory, trauma, obsession and betrayal.
Stephen May will also give readings and take part in a Q&A session. His first novel Tag (2008) won a Media Wales Readers’ Prize. His second novel Life! Death! Prizes! (2012) was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize, while his plays Back The World and Still Waiting For Everything toured nationally to good reviews. His third novel is Wake Up Happy Every Day.
The event concludes with novelist Amanda Hodgkinson in conversation with University of Huddersfield lecturers Dr Jodie Matthews and Dr Crump. Her debut novel 22 Britannia Road was an international bestseller, an Amazon.com Book of the Year in 2011, a Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee and was published in over 16 languages. Spilt Milk is her critically acclaimed second novel, published in 2014.
The Huddersfield Literature Festival event The University of Huddersfield Presents, featuring the three writers, is free and places can be reserved online.
