In this masterclass Nicholas Royle will reflect on the nature of contemporary fiction, creative non-fiction, and creative criticism. A reading pack is provided, containing a selection of Royle’s writings in these areas: essays on ‘Reading Creative Non-Fiction’ (co-authored with Andrew Bennett) and ‘Creative Critical’, as well as extracts from the novels Quilt and An English Guide to Birdwatching, the memoir Mother, and his most recent book, David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine.

Places are limited. Email Esther Peeren (e.peeren@uva.nl) by 5 September 2024 to register and receive the reading materials. Research MA students can get 1 ECTS for attending the masterclass and submitting an assignment based on the readings.     

Nicholas Royle is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Sussex, UK, where he established the MA and PhD program in creative and critical writing in 2001. He has also taught at the Universities of Oxford, Tampere (Finland), and Stirling; and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Århus (Denmark), Santiago del Compostela (Spain), Turku (Finland), Manitoba (Canada), and Lille (France). His publications include Telepathy and Literature (1990), The Uncanny (2003), Veering: A Theory of Literature (2011), and David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine (2023), as well as studies of the work of Elizabeth Bowen, E.M. Forster, Jacques Derrida, William Shakespeare and Hélène Cixous. Royle is the author of two novels, Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017), and Mother: A Memoir (2020). In addition, he is co-author with Andrew Bennett of An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Sixth edition, 2023) and This Thing Called Literature (Second edition, 2024). He is joint-managing editor of the Oxford Literary Review.