Writers in residence
Every year, the Centre for New Writing welcomes two Writers in Residence to be part of the programme for the spring term.
From 2017, in partnership with The International Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Manchester Museum, these visiting writer fellows will be known as the Burgess Fellows.
Anthony Burgess published his first writing while a student at the University, and this new partnership aims to support the emerging writers of today.
The first Burgess Writer Fellows were announced by the University’s President and Vice Chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, as Kayo Chingonyi and Joanna Walsh, during the Anthony Burgess Centenary Conference on 3 July 2017.
2023 Burgess Fellows
Dr Adelle Stripe
Dr Adelle Stripe was born in York in 1976. Her books include the recent Sunday Timesbestseller, Ten Thousand Apologies, and Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile. She was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Portico Prize for Literature. Her writing has featured in Excavate: The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, Flashback: Parties for the People by the People and Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers. Recently, she has recorded an audio essay on Bradford Ice Rink for ‘New Postscripts’, a BBC Sounds podcast based on J.B. Priestley’s classic wartime broadcasts. Adelle is a former MA student at the Centre for New Writing, and has lectured at MMU, Leeds Trinity and York St John. Her forthcoming book, Base Notes, is a perfume memoir that explores the connections between scent and memory. It will be published by White Rabbit Books in 2024.
Joe Carrick-Varty
Joe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet, writer and founding editor of bath magg. His work has appeared in the New Statesman, Granta and POETRY. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2022. His debut collection of poetry, More Sky, was published by Carcanet in January.
2022 Burgess Fellows
Will Harris
Will Harris is a London-based writer. His debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) is published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US. It was a Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He co-edited the Spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review with Mary Jean Chan.
Natasha Brown
Natasha Brown has spent a decade working in financial services, after studying Maths at Cambridge University. She developed Assembly, her debut novel after receiving a 2019 London Writers Award in the literary fiction category.
2020 Burgess Fellows
Rachael Allen
Rachael Allen’s first collection of poems, Kingdomland, is published by Faber & Faber. She is the co-author of a number of collaborative artists' books, including Nights of Poor Sleep with Marie Jacotey, and Almost One. Say Again! with JocJonJosch. She writes for ArtReview, TANK magazine and Music & Literature, hosts the Faber Poetry Podcast and is the poetry editor for Granta magazine and Granta Books. She is the 2020 Burgess Fellow for the Centre for New Writing.
Jessica Moor
Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at The University of Manchester. Prior to this she spent a year working in the violence against women and girls sector and this experience inspired her first novel, Keeper. She lives in Berlin, and is the Burgess Writing Fellow at the Centre for New Writing in spring 2020.
2019 Burgess Fellows
Rory Gleeson
Rory Gleeson is an author and screenwriter. He graduated with a BA in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, and went on to study at Oxford and UEA. He graduated with an MA in Creative Writing Fiction from The University of Manchester in 2013.
His writing has featured in The Irish Times, The Town Crier, RTÉ Culture, Miscellany Magazine and Far Off Places Magazine.
His debut novel Rockadoon Shore was published by John Murray in January 2017. It was chosen as the Eason Book Club 'Book of the Month' by NewstalkFM, and was one of the Dubray Recommends picks for February. He lives in London.
Zaffar Kunial
Zaffar Kunial is an award-winning poet. He has won the Northern Writers Award, the Faber New Poet prize and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for his poetry. He has been a writer in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust as well as Ilkley and Ledbury Literature Festivals.
This year Faber & Faber have published his debut full poetry collection ‘Us’ which was selected as the Poetry Book Society’s ‘Wild Card Choice’. His poetry has featured in anthologies published by Faber & Faber, Picador, Bloodaxe and The Poetry Society and he has had work commissioned by The Globe Theatre, Manchester Literature Festival and the BBC.
2018 Burgess Fellows
Kayo Chingonyi
Kayo Chingonyi, a Zambia-born UK-raised poet, is a graduate of the Complete Works programme and a winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.
Kayo's first book Kumukanda has recently been published by Chatto.
Joanna Walsh
Joanna Walsh is the author of Vertigo, Hotel and the online fiction Seed.
Her work has been published by Granta, Tate, The London Review of Books, The White Review and others. Her new book, Break.up: A Novel in Essays, will be published by Semiotext(e) in April 2018.
Previous Writers in Residence
2017
In spring 2017, the Writers in Residence were Joey Connolly and Grace McCleen. Their roles were to keep writing, to give a workshop session each and to act as mentors for the MA students, reading and commenting on work.
Joey Connolly
Joey Connolly grew up in Sheffield and studied in Manchester. Now he lives in London, where he is the manager of the Poetry Book Fair. His poetry and criticism have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Sunday Times and Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt), as well as on BBC Radio 4. He received an Eric Gregory award in 2012, and his first collection, Long Pass, is published by Carcanet.
Grace McCleen
Grace McCleen was born in Wales and raised in a fundamentalist religion. Despite great opposition from the religion she studied English Literature at Oxford and then York University. Her first novel, The Land of Decoration (Chatto and Windus, 2012), was translated into over 20 languages, and won the Betty Trask award and Desmond Elliott prize, amongst others. Her second novel, The Professor Poetry (Sceptre, 2013), was shortlisted for the Encore Award, and her third novel, The Offering (Sceptre 2015) was long listed for the Bailey's Prize. In 2016 she was writer in residence at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, producing a collection of poetry.
2016
Emma Jane Unsworth
Emma Jane Unsworth's first novel Hungry, the Stars and Everything (Hidden Gem) won a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors and was shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2012. Her short story 'I Arrive First' was included in The Best British Short Stories 2012 (Salt). She has worked as a journalist, a columnist for The Big Issue, and a barmaid. Her second novel Animals was published by Canongate in May 2014 and won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015. She is writing a third novel, as well as the screenplay of Animals, which has been optioned by BAFTA-nominated producer Sarah Brocklehurst and awarded development funding by the BFI.
Emma did the MA in Creative Writing here in 2002.
Rebecca Perry
Rebecca Perry is the Poetry Fellow for the Spring semester 2016.
Rebecca Perry's pamphlet, little armoured, was published by Seren in 2012 and won the Poetry Wales Purple Moose prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her first full collection Beauty/Beauty, was published by Bloodaxe in January 2015 and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection and the T S Eliot Prize.
Rebecca co-edits the online journal Poems In Which.
Rebecca did the MA in Creative Writing here in 2008.
Arts Council writer fellow
David Gaffney
Arts Council Relationship Manager and Flash Fiction author David Gaffney was appointed Writer Fellow at the Centre for New Writing for 2015-16. He ran microfiction workshops with Creative Writing students in semester 1. During his residency David was also available to talk to students about ideas they might have about applying for Arts Council funding.
Originally from Cleator Moor in West Cumbria, David now lives in Manchester. He is the author of Sawn-off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), The Half-life of Songs (2010) and his latest collection of short stories, More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). David was a judge for the 2015 Bridport Prize.
"One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others"
The Guardian
2015
Susan Barker
Susan Barker grew up in east London. After graduating from the University of Leeds with a degree in philosophy she spent two years teaching English in Kyoto, Japan. When she returned to the UK she studied on the creative writing MA at the University of Manchester, and completed her first novel Sayonara Bar, which was published in 2005 (Doubleday, UK, St Martins Press, US). Her second novel, The Orientalist and the Ghost, which is set in colonial and post-colonial Malaysia, was published in 2008.
Her third novel The Incarnations (Doubleday, UK, 2014, Simon and Schuster, US, 2015) is about a taxi driver in contemporary Beijing and interwoven with tales from the Tang Dynasty, the invasion of Genghis Khan, the Ming Dynasty, the Opium War, and the Cultural Revolution. While writing The Incarnations she spent several years living in Beijing, researching modern and imperial China.
Colette Bryce
Colette Bryce is the Poetry Fellow for the Spring semester 2015. Her collections with Picador include The Heel of Bernadette(2000), winner of the Aldeburgh Prize, The Full Indian Rope Trick(2004) and Self-Portrait in the Dark (2008). Originally from Northern Ireland, she lived for some years in London, Spain and Scotland, before settling in the north east of England in 2005. From 2009 to 2013 she was poetry editor for Poetry London. Her new collection, The Whole & Rain-domed Universe, which draws on her experience of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, was shortlisted for the Costa and Forward prizes in 2014. She received the Cholmondeley Award for her poetry in 2010.