Alumni
Since so many of our current and ex-students are making headway (and headlines) in the publishing industry, we thought it only fitting that we at U of G start celebrating their achievements. Thus, we’ve created a separate alumni page, reserved for those graduates of our BA, MA, or PhD programmes who have gone on to bigger and better things. This is our hall of fame, our wall of honour. We expect many more of our current students to join them in the future. Who knows? The next one just might be you…
Philip Bowne recently graduated with a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. In the UK, his short fiction has been published by The Lampeter Review, Sein und Werden,and Birkbeck University’sWriters’ Hub, and his short story ‘Cows Can’t Jump’ was selected as one of ten winners of the Stroud Short Stories competition. In the US, his short story ‘Forget-Me-Not’ won the Bartleby Snopes short fiction competition, and his work has appeared in other publications such as WORK, Gravel, BlazeVOX, The Atticus Review, and the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, in Canada. He has worked as a travel writer on a month long InterRail blog for Endsleigh which detailed his experiences travelling around Europe.The Guardian published his account of his trip in November 2014. Phil is in the process of writing his first novel and works as social media manager on the OnlineWritingTips website.
Anna Blauveldt was born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and graduated with an Honours B.A. degree from the University of New Brunswick. She moved to Ottawa to pursue a career with the federal government, culminating in her appointment as Canada’s Ambassador to Iceland. She subsequently completed the Post-Graduate Creative Writing Program of Humber College in Toronto and obtained a Masters’ degree with Merit in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, UK, in 2019. Her children’s picture book, Kat and the Meanies, was published in 2016. Her short story Irma appeared in the 2019 anthology “A Two-Four of Tales,” and Released appeared in the 2020 anthology “Short Stories for a Long Year,” both published by Ottawa Independent Writers. “To Play At God”, her debut collection of two literary fiction novellas, was published on October 25, 2021.
Chaucer Cameron is a poet based in Cheltenham who holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. Her work has been published in The Stare’s Nest, The Interpreter’s House, Quest Gallery Catalogue, Haigaonline, amaryllis poetry online, and she has had poetry and monologues dramatized at The Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham. Her poetry films have been screened at festivals in Cheltenham, Bristol, and Swindon, and at the Arnolfini as part of Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival. She is a founder member of PF, a poetry group based in Gloucestershire.
Lucie Brownlee holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire, and while studying at UoG her story ‘T-Shirt Weather’ was shortlisted for The Guardian Short Story Prize. In 2012 she tragically lost her husband and courageously began recording her experiences in her award-winning blog, Wife After Death. Often heart-breaking, Wife After Death also sparkles with humour and intelligence. After winning Best Personal Blog in the Blog North Award, Lucie signed a major book deal with Virgin Books to publish her memoir, Me After You. She currently runs creative writing classes for young authors and is in the early stages of a PhD. She has published many articles, including for The Independent, and is represented by literary agent Jemima Hunt – a fellow graduate of the University of Gloucestershire’s Creative and Critical Writing MA.
Ziggy Dicks holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. He often works with other poets locally and nationally to create events and to work on poetry projects. In 2016 he founded the Gloucestershire Poetry Society and the Gloucester Poetry Festival. Since then, he has had his work accepted by many publications including Ink, Sweat and Tears, Obsessed with Pipework, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Words from the Wild, Outlaw Poetry, Fresh Air Poetry, I am not a silent poet, As it Ought to Be, Nymphs, and Stride (plus many more and anthologies). He currently has two collections ‘Malcontent’ and ‘Intimate Nature’ with Black Eyes publishing (2019) and one ‘Vexed’ with Hedgehog Poetry Press (2020). Dicks has a keen interest in imagistic poetry and his work has been described ‘muscular language’ by Helen Ivory and has himself been described as ‘a gothic Seamus Heaney’ by Anna Saunders. In 2019 he was appointed Gloucestershire Poet Laureate and works in various settings to promote poetry.’
Dr Angela France is the author of five poetry collections, and her many achievements include winning the Lightship International Poetry Prize. Her poetry collections are Lessons in Mallemaroking (Nine Arches Press), Occupation (Ragged Raven Press), Hide, (Nine Arches Press) and The Hill, (Nine Arches Press) of which poet Sheenagh Pugh said ‘Exuberant, controlled, angry, elegiac, this is a poetry of landscape, politics, witness.‘ Angela has developed The Hill into a multi-media poetry show which she is performing around the country, with 10 dates funded by the Arts Council. Her latest collection Terminarchy was published in July 2021. Angela also runs a monthly live poetry event in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’, and has had poems published in a number of poetry journals and anthologies. She holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing and in 2015 she completed a PhD. Today, she combines teaching poetry and pedagogy at the University of Gloucestershire with facilitating community based writing workshops.
Lesley Ingram was born in Yorkshire, England and rediscovered her love of writing poetry when she abandoned her career in IT to move to France to teach EFL in 2000. She now lives in Ledbury. She has recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire where she will begin a PhD in Autumn 2013. She has been published in various places including Mslexia, The Flea, Dead Ink, iota, Under the Radar, Writers Abroad and Angle and her first collection, Scumbled was published by Cinnamon Press in 2015. She won the 2013 Ludlow Fringe Poetry competition.
DD Johnston wrote his first novel, Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs, while studying for an MA at the University of Gloucestershire, and his second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, while studying for a PhD. Peace, Love, and Petrol Bombs was a Sunday Herald book of the year in 2011, while The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub was a 2013 book of the year in The Morning Star, who described it as ‘a determinedly extraordinary novel.’ He is also the author of a Bridport Prize shortlisted story, ‘The Invitation’. Today he is part of the teaching staff at The University of Gloucestershire, where he was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship in 2013. His third novel, The Secret Baby Room, was published by Barbican Press in 2015. He was recently described by The Morning Star as “the best left-wing fiction author around.”
Sharon Larkin completed her MA at UoG in 2011. She is a poet, translator and photographer, with a poetry collection, Interned at the Food Factory, published by Indigo Dreams in January 2019. Her poems have been commended in competitions (eg Cinnamon Press, Happenstance, Prole and Mother’s Milk Books) and she has been a prizewinner in Here Comes Everyone and Amaryllis competitions. Her poems have been anthologised (eg Cinnamon Press, Eyewear Publications, Fairacre Press, and Anthology of Owls) and have been published in magazines (eg Prole, Obsessed with Pipework, Here Comes Everyone, Reach) and e-zines (including Ink, Sweat & Tears, Amaryllis, Rat’s Ass Review, Riggwelter, Picaroon, Algebra of Owls,The Stare’s Nest and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis). She recently wrote a poem in Welsh for the Elephant’s Footprint Wild Whispers international poetry film project. Sharon jointly runs Cheltenham Poetry Café – Refreshed, is Chair of Cheltenham’s Arts Council – and Cheltenham Poetry Society . She is also founder/editor of the Good Dadhood on-line poetry project. Sharon has a passion for Welsh language, literature and history. Website: Coming Up With The Words –https://sharonlarkinjones.com/
Mantie Lister is a graduate of our BA in Creative Writing and English Literature, and our MA in Creative and Critical Writing. Mantie, whose poems have also appeared in a number of print journals, excels as a performance poet, and in 2015 she was elected Bard of Exeter. According to ancient tradition, the town of Exeter is allowed to elect a Bard to serve for a term of one year and one day, and at 27 Mantie is believed to be the youngest Exeter Bard ever elected. Mantie teaches at St Peter’s School in Lympstone, where she is head of English.
Dr Kayleigh Moore is a proud MA graduate of U of G’s Creative Writing programme, and her studies culminated in a doctoral thesis investigating her creative process behind writing violence. She has had several short stories published, as well as two novellas. Her latest, ‘Dolls’ (2012), was written during her BA and is set in the world of fetish, bondage, S&M and consensual torture. ‘Monster Porn’ (2011), Kayleigh’s MA dissertation, is set in a particularly dark underbelly of the American pornography industry. In addition to her writing successes, Kayleigh has taught prose and poetry to university students and secondary school pupils. She is a member of NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) and continues to present papers on transgressive theory and the bodily grotesque at conferences throughout the UK. Today she is part of the teaching staff at the University of Gloucestershire.
Anna Saunders completed a Masters in Creative and Critical Writing at The University of Gloucestershire. Since beginning the course she has written four collections of poetry and launched a poetry festival. Her collections are: Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox ( Indigo Dreams) and the forthcoming Ghosting for Beginners ( Indigo Dreams, Spring 2018). She has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North and ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Donoghue. Anna is also the founder and executive director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. The festival was described as a ‘triumph’ when it was launched and as ‘a remarkable festival – an exemplum for all poetry and literary festivals’ by author Jonathan Taylor. Anna also runs poetry workshops and works as a creative writing mentor.
Daniel Sluman studied his undergraduate and postgraduate Creative Writing qualifications at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of three poetry collections, Absence Has a Weight of Its Own , The Terrible, and Single Window. He has previously held editorial roles at Dead Ink, Iota, and the award-winning disability anthology FTW: Poets against Atos. He co-edited the ground-breaking Nine Arches anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back. Daniel has received wide critical acclaim for his work and was named one of the Top 5 British Poets to Watch in 2015 by the Huffington Post.
Maria Stadnicka completed her MA in Creative and Critical Writing at University of Gloucestershire in 2019. She is the author of Short Story about War (Yew Tree Press, 2015), Imperfect (Yew Tree Press, 2017), The Unmoving (Broken Sleep Books, 2018), If You See My Mother, Buy Her Flowers (The Poets’ Republic Press, 2019), SOMNIA (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collections Buried Gods Metal Prophets and Uranium Bullets. Her poetry and essays appear in Axon, Meniscus, Social Alternatives, TEXT (Australia), Wienzeile (Austria), Dispatches Poetry Wars (Canada), NOON (Japan), The Ofi Press (Mexico), Hyperion, Poesis (Romania), Mary Evans Picture Library, Shearsman, Stride, Tears in the Fence, The Moth, The Poets’ Republic (UK), Osiris, Dissident Voice (US). Maria is a book reviewer for Saboteur Awards and regular contributor for the International Times. She features on the album Evenfall (2018) released by Gecko Recordings London, ITunes and Spotify, and recently performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, International Poetry Festival Marrakech (Morocco), Oxford University, Plymouth Language Club, Tears in the Fence Festival, University of Winchester. She is currently studying for a PhD focused on researching the metaphoric social interpretations of the Cold War. Further information about her work and collaborations at www.mariastadnicka.com.
Emmy Summers completed her BA in Creative Writing in 2014.
She has been writing since childhood, and her poetry and prose work has been published in several anthologies, including previous University of Gloucestershire anthologies Fire and Carnival, and in online collections.
She now works in academic publishing as an Editorial Assistant at Taylor & Francis in Oxford and is their open access specialist.
Lucy Tyler holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire and an M.Phil in playwriting from Birmingham University. Her plays, which have been performed in London, Berlin, and New York, include The Operators, which in summer 2011 ran in Washington to critical acclaim, and The Measurements of a Murderer, which has recently been anthologised in Scenes for a Diverse World (ICWP Press). Lucy’s recent creative and critical projects have explored psychogeography and the social construction of space. In 2012 she was commissioned by Paine’s Plough to write and perform a play about Cheltenham as part of a ‘theatrical tapestry’ of the UK. She also founded Eleven Places Theatre Company, whose experimental play The Recipe for Belonging was performed in January 2013. Most recently, she and Eleven Places collaborated with Dreamshed Theatre Company to produce Places I Remember – a trilogy of plays about space that ran at The Everyman Theatre in June 2014. Her critical work includes studies of Virginia Woolf and outdoor theatre, work on Debbie tucker green, and studies of institutional dramaturgy. Lucy is currently Lecturer in Performance Practices and Industries at the University of Reading.