Professor Jenn Ashworth
Professor of WritingCurrent Teaching
I teach undergraduate modules in creative non fiction and long fiction. I teach MA modules in the personal essay and the novel.
Research Overview
My main areas of interest are long prose fiction the short story and creative non fiction and the personal essay. My recent work has concentrated on the unreliable or limited narrator and on LDS fiction and on respresentations of the sick or traumatised self in memoir / the lyric essay and hybrid works. My last novel, Fell (2016), engages with ideas about healing, transformation, haunting and masculinity and I have recently returned to these themes in a book length collection of linked personal essays provisionally entitled Notes Made While Falling.
I am also interested in writing industries and new routes into publication for writers, collaborative working between writers, and the way writers and other creative practitioners work together. With this in mind, in 2013 I co-founded the writers' and artists' collective, Curious Tales, which allows practioners to work together to create, produce and deliver creative works. So far we have published the illustrated anthologies: The Longest Night: Five Curious Tales, Poor Souls' Light: Seven Curious Tales, Bus StationL Unbound, The Barrow Rapture and Congregation of Innocents: Five Curious Tales. I also co-write collaborative weird/uncanny/horror fiction with R. S Hirst (The Night Vistors, Plunge Hill Hospital, etc).
Career Details
I studied English at Newnham College, Cambridge and took my MA in Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing, Manchester University. I started my career in libraries, working at the Bodleian library, Oxford University as well as in public libraries and prison libraries in Lancashire as a chartered librarian with a specialist interest in reader development and writing industries work.
From there, I went on to become a freelance writer, literature development and project worker, setting up the Lancashire Writing Hub and developing other writing development projects across the North West.
I have lectured at UCLAN, held a Writing Research Fellowship at Manchester University's Centre for New Writing and most recently, joined the Department of English and Creative Writing here at Lancaster in 2011.
My first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, won a Betty Trask Award. On the publication of my second, Cold Light, I was featured on the BBC's Culture Show as one of Britain's 12 best new novelists. My third novel, The Friday Gospels was published in 2013. Fell was published in 2016. My collaborative work with Richard Hirst began in 2013 with the co-founding of the writers' and artists' collective Curious Tales: together we have published three anthologies of short fiction and two collaboratively written novellas.
Web Links
Professional Role
Subject Lead in Creative Writing.
Thesis Title
Preaching to the Choir: Writing and Uncertainty in a Mormon Context
Qualifications
BA hons English Literature (2003) Newnham College, University of Cambridge
MA Creative Writing (2006) Centre for New Writing, Manchester University
PhD Creative Writing (2013) Lancaster University
PGCert Academic Practice (2014) Lancaster University
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
PhD Supervision Interests
I am interested in seeing proposals on fiction - the novel / short story collections, creative non fiction - personal / lyric essays, memoir, autobiographies, creative/critical and hybrid forms. I am particularly interested in projects that engage with a 'sense of place' (including the no-place of cyberspace), first person fiction / non-fiction and the instability / unreliability this mode of story-telling engenders, projects that merge fiction with memoir and autobiographical writing or documentary, or ones which use epistolary forms. I am also interested in LDS fiction and fiction non/fiction that engages with religion and religious experience more generally.
Tall Tales: Women Artists' Playful Exploration of the Human Experience
01/02/2016 → 31/07/2016
Other
Poor Souls' Light: Seven Curious Tales
15/08/2014 → 30/01/2015
Other
The Longest Night: Five Curious Tales
01/08/2013 → 30/01/2014
Other
The Barrow Rapture
01/09/2012 → 31/12/2015
Other
Manchester Letters
14/06/2012 → 21/11/2012
Other
Station Stories
01/05/2011 → 20/07/2011
Other
Ghostwatch: Ghost Story Book Club Live Podcast
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Notes Made While Falling: reading and Q and A
Invited talk
New Life Writing
Invited talk
Burnley Books Festival talk
Invited talk
The Not Quite Light Festival
Invited talk
The Word Factory
Consultancy
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Grange Over Sands Library
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Bramhall Library
Invited talk
'Collaborating with authors' at Time to Read
Invited talk
membership of external reference group
Consultancy
'Attempts on the Life of King Lear' from Notes Made While Falling at The Critical Subject Symposium
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at The Word Centre, Tyneside Libraries
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Ingleton Library
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Gateshead Library
Invited talk
launch of 'Seaside Special: Postcards from the Edge' at Blackpool Wordpool Festival
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Spennymoor Library, Durham
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Wetherby Library, Leeds
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Doncaster Library
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Halifax Library
Invited talk
Death and the Sacred Symposium
Invited talk
New Writing North Read Regional Tour: 'Fell' at Market Weighton Library
Invited talk
reading 'Mrs Mackie Waits' at the Mechanic's Institute Review launch, Manchester
Invited talk
reading from 'Fell' at Nottingham Readers' Day
Invited talk
'The Least of These' for The Lonely Crowd launch - Cardiff
Invited talk
'The Haunted North' - Borderlines Book Festival, Carlise
Invited talk
'Voices and Places' - talk about Fell for the Crickhowel Literature Festival
Invited talk
'Made in a Library' talk at the Libraries Matter launch event, Worthing
Invited talk
Judge for the 2017 Clarissa Lund Prize
Consultancy
'The Courage to Write' - For Books' Sake
Invited talk
Society of Chief Librarians AGM - 'Made in a Library' talk
Invited talk
Writing Place and Landscape Workshop - Newcastle Writing Conference
Invited talk
The Night Visitors: Launch Event
Invited talk
BBC Free Thinking Festival
Invited talk
Huddersfield Literature Festival
Invited talk
South Bank Festival: Belief and Beyond
Invited talk
'Yours Sincerely: The Rise and Fall of the Letter'
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Newnham College Literary Archive Weekend
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
2012 Great Writing Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Core Prose Specialist
Consultancy
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Election to learned society
Society of Authors Travel Scholarship
Prize (including medals and awards)
BBC British Short Story Award - shortlisted
Prize (including medals and awards)
Honorary Fellow, Newnham College, Cambridge
Fellowship awarded competitively
The Portico Prize - shortlisted
Prize (including medals and awards)
The Betty Trask Award
Prize (including medals and awards)
The Gordon Burn Prize - shortlisted
Prize (including medals and awards)
- Authors and the World
- Creative Writing
- Creative-Critical Writing
- Digital Humanities
- Gothic and Science Fiction
- Literature and Religion
- Literature, Space and Place
- Literature, the Arts, Media and Performance