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Writers at York: Spring and Summer 2014

Posted on 18 February 2014

This year’s Writers at York programme is ambitiously designed to begin transforming Writers at York into the premier showcase for poetry and fiction in the North of England.

Writers at York logo

The English Department was recently awarded £17,000 of University of York’s External Engagement Awards funding to support its flagship writer event series (Writers at York), as well as a multimedia project on silent film (Silents Now) and educational partnerships in York, Leeds, Austria, Belgium and Pakistan.

Since 2006, Writers at York has brought audiences to the University to hear the work of contemporary poets and fiction writers.  Events last year raised its profile, and this year’s programme of talks, lectures, and ‘in conversations’ has an international line-up of speakers (Maureen McLane, Tabish Khair, Lavinia Greenlaw, Alice Goodman and Michael Symmons Roberts, Adil Ray, Daniel Mulhall, and Patrick French), marking an expansion from British and Irish writers to include South Asian and British Asian authors.

Writers at York co-convenor and lecturer of Global Literatures, Dr Claire Chambers, said, ‘We are delighted to announce this ambitious, intellectually stimulating series of free talks to be held at York this spring and summer. Aficionados of poetry, music, fiction, biography and television will all find events of interest on the Writers at York programme’.

The Irish South Asian Experience of Literature in Society

One of the talks, a Bloomsday lecture on James Joyce to be delivered by Daniel Mulhall the Irish Ambassador to the UK (Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, Heslington West Campus, Monday 16 June, 5pm), will underscore the political and social vitality of literature. Both in Ireland and the Indian subcontinent, poetry, fiction and the arts are less elitist than in England, and are more likely to play a high-profile role in everyday life and public politics. Writers at York is inspired and informed by the Irish and South Asian experience of literature in society.