University of Cambridge Contemporary Research Group
Francis Spufford will be reading and discussing his work on WEDNESDAY 18 DECEMBER at 6pm at Clare Hall, West Court, at the end of Herschel Road.
Francis Spufford is the author of memoir, historical fiction and popular science, including I May be Some Time, The Child That Books Built, Red Plenty and Unapologetic (on Christianity); he teaches at Goldsmith’s College, University of London.
Contact Dr Trudi Tate tt206@cam.ac.uk
Find out about events this term at Fitzwilliam Literary Society
‘Nowadays, of course, writing is often seen as a profession like any other. To take this year’s Man Booker winner, Eleanor Catton, as an example of what might be seen as a novelist’s ideal career in 2013: one does a degree in English literature, and immediately afterwards a master’s degree in creative writing. Your first published novel is your MA thesis. Afterwards, you are given a post teaching creative writing in a university, and your second novel wins a major prize. Not to criticise the excellent Ms Catton, but this model of a novelist’s career is going to produce novelists with a narrow grasp of human experience, whose novels are increasingly going to have to come from historical research and meta-fictional game-playing and, ultimately, novels about creative writing degrees.’ Philip Hensher on Penelope Fitzgerald
Anyone want to argue with this, by now pretty standard, view?
Eleanor Catton has just won the 2013 Booker prize with what the Guardian terms an ‘innovative Victorian thriller’ (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). Catton is quoted as saying that her novel The Luminaries was ‘very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama … at last the novel has found its on-screen equivalent’. But what does it mean to be influenced by box-set TV drama?Just a matter of length? Or is there more to it? Something non-Victorian?
CAMBRIDGE GROUP FOR IRISH STUDIES Tuesday 22nd October at 8.45pm The Parlour, Magdalene College Professor EAMON DUFFY (Magdalene College, Cambridge) 'SEAMUS HEANEY AND CATHOLICISM' All welcome Wine and whiskey will flow Any questions to jk10023
Congratulations to Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate. Let’s hope that in her case it’s not the ticket to obscurity that it’s been for Sinclair Lewis, Knut Hamsun and so many others.
But a good year for North American short story writers and an excuse to post Munro’s Paris Review interview, and to recommend ‘The Art of Fiction’ series more generally.
Redell Olsen and Ian Patterson will read from their work. Tuesday 15th October, 8 pm. All welcome. Judith E Wilson Drama Studio, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, 9 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP Redell Olsen's books of poetry include: 'Secure Portable Space' (2004); 'Punk Faun: A Bar Rock Pastel' (Subpress, 2012): see also <http://redellolsen.co.uk/wordpress/>; <http://filmpoems.wordpress.com>. Ian Patterson's books of poetry include: Time to Get Here: Selected Poems 1969-2002 (Salt, 2003); and 'The Glass Bell' (Barque, 2009). see also: <http://ianpatterson.typepad.com>.
*The Poetry of Things* 24th October 3:30-6:30pm, *Museum of Classical Archaeology, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA* Join us for an afternoon of poetry readings and discussion as Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Sean Borodale and Jo Shapcott talk about their recent experiences as poets in residence with the Thresholds project in the University of Cambridge Museums and collections. The poets will be in conversation with Professors Isobel Armstrong and Steven Connor. Drinks afterwards. The Thresholds project coincides with a growing interest in the way that fiction represents objects and the physical world. Questions are being asked about how writing mediates objects, the relationship between the verbal, visual and material and the social life of things. This event offers an opportunity hear poets and literary scholars consider these questions and to join in with the discussion! To read the four poems that will be discussed during this event visit http://www.thresholds.org.uk/ and search under Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Sean Borodale and Jo Shapcott. For more information contact Vicky Mills vm321@cam.ac.uk <mailto:vm321@cam.ac.uk>
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