Goldsmiths Writers' Centre People

Dr Ros Barber

Dr Ros Barber is a Senior lecture in Creative and Life writing with experience in teaching Poetry, short story, the novel, literary fiction, fictional auto/biography, literary biography, life writing, Shakespeare.

Emeritus Professor Maura Dooley

Maura Dooley’s most recent collection Five Fifty-Five (Bloodaxe) was published in Spring 2023. She has been short-listed three times for the TS Eliot Award and also for the Forward Single Poem Award.

Dr Livia Franchini

Livia Franchini is a writer & translator from Tuscany, Italy. She is the author of a novel, SHELF LIFE (Doubleday, 2019) and a poetry pamphlet, OUR AVAILABLE MAGIC (Makina Books, 2019).

Stephen Knight

Stephen was born in Swansea in 1960, read English at Jesus College, Oxford, then studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School to become a freelance director with a particular interest in new writing. He has worked for thirty years as a creative-writing tutor in schools, colleges, The City Lit, the University of South Wales and Goldsmiths.

Dr Tom Lee

Tom Lee is the author of The Alarming Palsy of James Orr, a novel, Greenfly, a collection of short stories, and The Bullet, a memoir.

Emeritus Professor Blake Morrison

Blake Morrison is a poet, novelist and journalist. His non-fiction books include And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize and the Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award, As If (1997), about the murder of the toddler James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, and a memoir of his mother, Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002).

Amy Sackville

Amy Sackville writes novels, short fiction and occasional personal essays and reviews; she is interested in historical fiction that incorporates creative approaches to biography, and autofiction.

Her novel, Painter to the King (Granta, 2018), is about the painter Diego Velázquez and his life and work in the court of Philip IV of Spain. Her previous novels are Orkney (Granta, 2013), for which she received a Somerset Maugham Award, and The Still Point (Portobello, 2010), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

She has written for The Guardian, The Independent, Literary Hub, Fictionable, and others. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

She completed the MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths in 2008 and is now Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing.

Richard Scott

Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His first book Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018), was a Gay’s the Word book of the year and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize. His second poetry collection, That Broke into Shining Crystals, is forthcoming from Faber & Faber in February 2025. 

Professor Francis Spufford

Professor Francis Spufford has a BA in English Literature, from University of Cambridge, 1985; chief publisher’s reader, Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1987-90; full-time writer, 1990-2004; writer in residence, University College London, 2004-5; Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge) 2005-07; at Goldsmiths since 2007.

Dr Jack Underwood

Dr Jack Underwood is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021).

His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation.

He is co-presenter and curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

Dr Erica Wagner

Distinguished Fellow of the Goldsmiths Writers Centre, Erica Wagner was born in New York City and is a widely-acclaimed author and critic. She is the author of Gravity: Stories, Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters and Seizure, a novel; she is the editor of First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner.

Dr Benjamin Woolley

Distinguished Fellow of the Writers' Centre, Dr Benjamin Woolley has written biographies and histories on subjects ranging from the colonisation of America to Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer. His most recent book, King’s Assassin, is being adapted as a TV miniseries for Sky/AMC starring Julieanne Moore. His academic work includes ‘What’s History doing in Fiction’, a study of the role of history in fiction and dram