News

Goldsmiths alumna picks up prestigious prizes for literature

Lucy Caldwell, who has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, has won the 2011 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Click here for further details

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ECL Creative Writer takes part in a new anthology on Dyslexic Writers

Caroline Gardner, a Goldsmiths alumna in Creative Writing, has taken part in an exciting new anthology of writings by dyslexic authors. The anthology, entitled Forgotten Letters, is edited by Naomi Folb (PhD Educational Studies) and includes a long list of well known as well as up and coming creative writers. Contributors include: Billy Childish (co-founder of the Stuckism Art Movement); Andrew Solomon (winner of the 2001 National Book Award and finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize); Thomas West (author of Thinking Like Einstein and In the Mind’s Eye); Sally Gardner, (winner of the 2005 Nestlé Children's Book Prize Gold Award and, shortlisted for the British Children's Book of the Year in 2006); Philip Schultz (winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry); and Benjamin Zephaniah (included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008).

Further information on Forgotten Letters and its contributors can be found here or via the publisher's website, r-a-s-p

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Thinking the Olympics

Dr Michael Simpson has co-edited and contributed to a collection of scholarly essays on the history of the Olympic Games.  Thinking the Olympics: The Classical Tradition and the Modern Games (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) investigates how the very idea of tradition has systematically informed both the ancient and modern Games.  The book specifically examines how the cultural tradition focussed on ancient Greece is almost ritually re-activated and adapted both in the athletic contests and, more particularly, in the poetry, visual art and architecture that accompany, frame and represent the Games.

Further Information

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We Are Three Sisters

Blake Morrison, ECL's Professor of Creative Writing, has written a play which has got the critics talking.

The play is based on the lives of the Brontë sisters but makes use of a creative twist on Chekhov. Although he initially described the idea of transposing the action of Chekhov's play, Three Sisters, to the moorlands of Yorkshire as 'bonkers', Blake Morrison has written a play which one critic predicts 'should enjoy long, celebrated existence' (The Telegraph). For another critic, the choice of setting for We Are Three Sisters works particularly well, whereby 'the general contour is superimposed on the Yorkshire landscape with remarkable ease, and the similarities are striking' (The Guardian).

We Are Three Sisters opened in The Viaduct Theatre, Halifax and will be going on tour across the UK. Click here for tour dates.

Reviews

• The Yorkshire Post
• The Stage
• BBC
• The Yorkshire Post
• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• The Stage
• The Public Reviews
• Brontes Parsonage
• The Independent
• The Yorkshire Post
• The Morning Star
• The Guardian
• The Financial Times
• What's On Stage
• The Guardian

Interviews with Blake Morrison

• Yorkshire Post
• BBC

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ECL students win international essay prize, again!

Beth Guilding and Roxanna Drayson, ECL finalists in 2009-10, won second and third prize in the International Emory Elliot Essay Competition, organised by the Literary Encyclopedia! See http://www.litencyc.com/prizewinners2010.php for more news, and to read their essays - both of these had been written for the course "Literature in Question: Writing Since WWII". 

And if that wasn't enough.... the previous year Thomas McMullen had won first prize for the same competition, also with an essay written for "Literature in Question"! (Tom's essay is at: http://www.litencyc.com/prizewinners2009.php) 

Lucia Boldrini (course tutor) and Beth were interviewed about this by Mira Vogel and Fotis Begklis, and although Lucia is very embarrassed about her gesticulation and apparent biting of nails, she has reluctantly agreed to have the video uploaded.

 

ECL student gets Joyce scholarship

ECL student Sophie Corser, who is studying on the MA Comparative Literary Studies and admits being obsessive about Ulysses, has been awarded a scholarship of 970 Euros by the Dublin James Joyce Summer School to attend the School's week-long programme of lectures, seminars and social activities. She'll be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Professor Anne Fogarty, Fritz Senn, Maud Ellmann. School information at: http://www.joycesummerschool.ie/
Well done Sophie!

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ECL Lecturer wins Peake Teaching Award

Dr Lucia Boldrini has won a Peake Teaching award in recognition of her excellence in teaching and in supporting the students learning experience. More information here.

The QS World University Rankings has placed the department of English & Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths in the top 200 of the world universities. More information here.