Catching Up on Recent Student and Staff Achievements at UoG
17th February 2016
As ever here at UoG, it’s been hard to keep track of our recent student and staff successes, so hopefully a quick blog post will remedy that. First up, 2015 BA graduate Phil Bowne continues to establish himself as a young writer worth watching. Phil appeared numerous times in our New Writing anthologies, received the prize for best undergraduate dissertation, and also won our Novel Writing Contest (judged by agent Becky Thomas) with his novel, Eva. Last week, Phil was down in London to read at Waterstones Covent Garden as part of the Novel London event. Phil put in a great showing, and even bothered to shave (which he never did for our lectures). Here he is, delivering the goods:
Current students are having success as well; our multi-talented MA student, Olly Smith, writes mind-bending speculative fiction (including a piece in Compass: New Writing IV) and has had both short stories and poetry published in a wide range of journals and anthologies. Most recently, he has placed two new poems in the latest edition of Spectral Realms, a journal published by Hippocampus Press. You can check out the issue, and buy one on their website (if you feel like being spooked!).
In addition to these student successes, Senior Lecturer Tyler Keevil had some good news recently: his short story ‘The Herd’, which was first published in Dead North, has now been optioned for feature film adaptation by director Jeremy Ball. Jeremy comes from a visual effects background, and has worked on some major studio pictures, including Jackie Chan’s Forbidden Kingdom, Zhang Yimou’s Flowers of War, and the Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Recently his short film Frost debuted at TIFF and turned heads on the festival circuit, picking up kudos and awards. Tyler and Jeremy are currently working on The Herd treatment; the film will be set in a frozen Arctic wasteland, and draws on the Wendigo legend and the zombie archetype. It’s a long-term project, but in the meantime you can check out a clip from Jeremy’s short below, courtesy of Youtube…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLcs78a170c?rel=0&w=560&h=315]