A ‘Big Dog’ on Route 57
The School of English at the University of Sheffield have just published this year’s edition of Route 57, an online creative writing magazine under the shared editorship of various staff … Continue reading
Are You At Home?: (Part 2: Sound, Sleep and Stuff)
I had an overwhelming response to my last blog post on concepts of home and the uncanny. Away from the blog, it prompted Facebook comments, Tweets and face-to-face conversations (remember … Continue reading
Are You At Home? (Part I: The Uncanny)
Shortly before Christmas, something strange happened: my Mum asked me a question I could not answer. “Where are you? Are you at home?”. I paused. “Where do you mean by … Continue reading
Storying Sheffield 2012
Back in June I found myself on a train reading the following passage from George Eliot’s Middlemarch: [Bulstrode] felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything … Continue reading
Review Essay on Victorian Life-Writing (JVC 17.1)
A quick post to announce the publication of my review essay on recent studies of Victorian life-writing in the Journal of Victorian Culture. I was asked to review Max Saunders’ … Continue reading
On Blogging and Being Busy
Regular visitors to the blog will no doubt have realised this is not the long awaited third instalment of my series on celebrity memoir. Be assured this post is on … Continue reading
Celebrity Memoir II: Dear Fatty
Last week I blogged about the Christmas trade in celebrity memoir, and by coincidence or serendipity, last Friday’s Guardian Books podcast contained a segment on the genre. In it, Claire … Continue reading
Celebrity Memoirs I: A Tale of Literary Snobbishness?
Certain news stories recur with amusing frequency, and Christmas is a ripe time for Lazarus-like reappearances. Worried by spectres of debt, each year we are warned of the dangers of … Continue reading
Life Narratives in the News
Lots of life narrative stories have caught my eye in the past week… Joe Fassler, ‘Why Jonathan Lethem Loves Meta-Nonfiction and Hates Superhero Flicks’, The Atlantic, 10 November 2011 Offering … Continue reading
Crossing Over
I was particularly struck by an article in this week’s Times Higher Education: ‘Through the eyes of others’ (27 Oct–2 Nov 2011). It asked what the positives and pitfalls are … Continue reading
