Staff Profiles

Celia is a novelist and cultural commentator. She is the author of nine novels. The latest, Wild Weekend (Time Warner Books, 2004) explores the tensions in a Suffolk village in homage to Oliver Goldmsith's She Stoops to Conquer. To explore suburban living, she created the community of Westwick and explored mid-life manners in Mr Fabulous And Friends, and the environmental implications of urbanisation in Getting Home. She has often juxtaposed historical and contemporary settings, notably eighteenth century Spain in Sunset, pre-revolutionary St Petersburg in White Ice and Malaysia in the time of World War II in Pearls. Four of her novels have been optioned by major US, UK or French producers.

Her non-fiction titles include two standard works on the art of writing: Arts Reviews (Kamera Books, 2008) and, Bestseller (Fourth Estate, 1996.) Her most recent is Deep France (Pan, 2004) a journal of a year she spent writing in south-west France.

She has served on the management committee of The Society of Authors and judged national literary awards including the Betty Trask Award and the Macmillan Silver PEN Prize. A former media columnist, she contributes to The Times, BBC Radio 4 and other national and international media.

Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Brayfield

Bernardine Evaristo’s six books of fiction and verse-fiction are: Hello Mum (Penguin 2010), Lara (Bloodaxe 2009), Blonde Roots (Penguin 2008), Soul Tourists (Penguin 2005), The Emperor’s Babe (Penguin 2001), Island of Abraham (Peepal Tree, 1994).

She co-edited the anthology Ten: new black and Asian poets (Bloodaxe 2010); Wasafiri: Black Britain-Beyond Definition (Routledge 2010); and the British Council anthology NW15 (Granta 2007). She reviews books for the Guardian, Times, Independent and Financial Times and has written fiction and drama for BBC radio.

Her awards and honours include an MBE in 2009; 12 ‘Book of the Year’ selections in British newspapers; several literary awards; and she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of  Literature in 2004 and of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006. She has also judged several literary prizes.

She has taught creative writing widely since 1994 including at the University of East Anglia (UEA) as Writing Fellow in 2002, and again in 2011-2012 to design and teach the inaugural six month beginner fiction course for ‘UEA-Guardian Masterclasses’. Since 1997 she has undertaken over seventy-five international tours as a writer giving talks, readings, courses and workshops. These include visiting professorships/writer residencies at several US universities including Barnard College and Georgetown University, and in South Africa and Germany. She has also taught courses for the British Council in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Sarah Penny was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1970. She studied at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University and St Andrews University, Scotland. She emigrated to the United Kingdom in 2003, and has lectured in English and Creative Writing at Brunel University ever since.

Her first novel, The Beneficiaries, was published in 2002 with Penguin South Africa, and was the runner-up for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. Set during The Truth And Reconciliation Commission, the novel explores a young woman’s attempt to come to terms with her traumatic past.

A second novel, The Lies We Shared, moves between Kenya, Zimbabwe and London, tracing a daughter’s attempt to discover her family’s secrets in the wake of her mother’s recent death.

Sarah is married to the historian, John Dickie, has two young children, and lives in North London. Her abiding interest is in African history, culture and languages, particularly within Southern and East Africa. Another lifelong fascination is African wildlife, animal behaviour and nature conservation.

Matt Thorne is the author of six novels, including Eight Minutes Idle, which won an Encore Award for Best Second Novel published that year and has recently been made into a film for which he co-wrote the screenplay and Cherry, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He is also the author of three books for children, the 39 Castles series, and has co-edited two anthologies, All Hail the New Puritans and Croatian Nights.

Matt is currently writing his first work of non-fiction, a critical study of the pop star Prince for Faber and Faber. He also reviews fiction and film for the national newspapers and radio stations.

Fay Weldon is known as one of Britain’s most influential, best-read and versatile writers. As well as over 30 novels - her first in 1969 - she writes for stage, screen, opera, television and radio, and her work has been translated into most word languages. Her novel Life and Loves of a She Devil was a major Hollywood movie and a Bafta award-winning BBC series: she wrote the pilot episode of Upstairs-Downstairs, and her screen play of her opera version of Radiguet 's 1917 novel the Devil in the Flesh is currently in production in France. Her latest novel Kehua! (2011) has just been published to enthusiastic reviews. Her essays and reviews appear regularly in leading newspapers and journals in this country and abroad.  Her work travels and translates well she says, inasmuch as the three-way relationship between men, women and a rapidly changing society is pretty much the same everywhere.

She has a reputation, albeit a controversial one, as one of the formative influences in Britain's feminist revolution of the seventies and eighties. She has been awarded a doctorate of literature by several British universities.

Fay has a CBE for services to literature, and is a familiar face on British TV, and as a voice on BBC radio.

Professor Benjamin Zephaniah was one of the pioneers of the performance poetry ‘scene’ in Britain. He was part of the ‘school’ known as the ‘Dub Poets’, these were poets that work alongside reggae music. He has spent most of his life performing around the world in schools, universities, concert halls, and public spaces.

He has also written novels for young adults, and plays for radio and stage. Although his music is rooted in reggae, his recordings now have many influences. He contributes to many radio programmes and has presented programmes on radio and television concerning literature, culture, race and politics.