Vic Pickup is the author of Lost & Found (Hedgehog Press, 2020), What Colour is My Brain? (co-written with Jules Whiting, Hedgehog Press 2022) and The Omniscient Tooth Fairy (Indigo Dreams, 2023). She has also edited an anthology, Reading Poets, forthcoming in June 2024 from Two Rivers Press. Vic is a co-organiser of Poets Café Reading and the town’s Stanza group. Her website is here. About The Omniscient Tooth Fairy, by Vic PickupThe Omniscient Tooth Fairy documents the decade following the poet becoming a mother: from hospital visits and melted Easter eggs to viewing world news thr ..read more

  Andrew Lees was born on Merseyside and is a Professor of Neurology at The National Hospital, Queen Square and University College London. He is in the top three most highly cited Parkinson’s disease researchers in the world and included in Thomson Reuters 2015 List of the Worlds Most Scientific Minds. He has written the authorised biography of the Arsenal and Liverpool football player Ray Kennedy who developed Parkinson’s disease in his early thirties (Ray of Hope, Penguin 1994) and which was made into a television documentary, Liverpool the Hurricane Port (Random House 2011) a bo ..read more

  Daniel Lawless is the author most recently of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With; his current book, I Tell You This Now was released in March, 2024. Recent poems appear in FIELD, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, upsteet, SOLSTICE, Manhattan Review, Massachusetts Review, JAMA, and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume:  A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Plume Editions, and the annual ..read more

  Carrie Etter, photo by Fabrizia Costa Grief’s Alphabet is Carrie Etter’s fifth collection of poetry. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other journals and anthologies internationally. She is a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Bristol, and she also writes fiction, essays, and reviews. Her website is here.  About Grief's Alphabet Grief’s Alphabet is a memoir in poems of the poet’s relationship with her adoptive mother up to her ..read more

It's been a few months since our last news post (which you can read here), so we thought it was time for an update, now we're at the end of the Spring term. There are some great news stories to share from Creative Writing and the Centre for New Writing. Wishing everyone a great Easter break! General News from Creative Writing at Leicester There have been some great events, guest talks and masterclasses at the University over the last few months. You can read about some of them here - and there are still more to come next term. Do take a look. As part of this year's amazing Literary Leiceste ..read more

Writing is a lonely business. When writers aren’t living in their heads, staring out of a window or into a coffee cup, when we’re not watching how people talk and move so we can use it later on, we are on our own writing, re-writing, editing, re-editing, lamenting and occasionally celebrating. Then comes the sharing bit. You know when you ask your best friend to read what you’ve done and you send the email and you wait and wait and hope that they say, "Oh wow! Brilliant!" because anything else has you reaching for the tissues. And then back to the screen for another bout of editing and refi ..read more

  Richard Byrt has tried to improve and develop his poems since completing an MA in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, following his retirement from his day job in 2011. He has published poems in his collection, Devil's Bit (2015), in several co-authored collections and in Glitterwolf LGBTQ+ magazine. Richard facilitates Creative Writing at SoundCafe Leicester, a charity for people with many talents and abilities, who have experienced homelessness or insecure housing. He is actively involved in Pinggg...K!, a monthly poetry event in Leicester, and occasionally reads / performs ..read more

  Siobhian R. Hodges is a Leicestershire writer, author of the Young Adult novel Killing a Dead Man and anthology Untitled Decade. Siobhian has a BA in Creative Writing and Film Studies from De Montfort University and an MA in Creative Writing from Loughborough University. During her studies, she was both scriptwriter and script editor for Gatling Gun Productions (the not-for-profit film company she set up alongside her dad and sister). She has since written, edited and supervised several scripts, and even directed her own book trailer under the production company. With her experience i ..read more

Martin Figura was (some time ago now) described in a hospital referral letter (bad back) as ‘a pleasant 58 year old gentleman.’ His collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016. During the first lockdown he began the monthly Zoom event Live From The Butchery with Helen Ivory and Kate Birch. It won the Best Spoken Word Night Saboteur Award. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence, with a ..read more

Congratulations to University of Leicester graduate Amrita Manku, whose play The Incident is being performed at the Curve Theatre this Friday! Amrita Manku is an emerging writer and director from Derby who studied a Minor in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She is interested in creating and telling stories that hold up a mirror to society, start meaningful conversations and leave the audience thinking. Her first play, The Incident, is a comedic speculative fiction piece that explores themes of fate and destiny. The play will be performed script-in-hand as one of four showing ..read more