This year UEA is proudly celebrating 50 years of its Creative Writing course. UEA’s Autumn Literary Festival has not allowed distancing measures to interrupt their celebration, and instead are holding the seven-week series online, as UEA Live. Acclaimed crime author Lee Child kicked off the event on Wednesday night (7 October). Lee Child is a…
Books
‘Reclaim her Name’: a new collection released under authors’ real names
Historically, there has been a major disparity in the treatment of male authors in comparison to female authors. In an attempt to counteract this, some female authors publish under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms in order to avoid any potential sexist or misogynistic discrimination. One of the most well-known examples of this would be JK Rowling,…
Books
Huckleberry Finn: conscious resistance against unconscious racism
Around the same time BLM marches gained momentum, I read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Set in the 1840s when slavery was still an industry in some southern US states, it offers a view into how attitudes, no matter how immoral, can be justified so long as they are normalized. Despite being his friend, Huck…
Books
Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy celebrates its 42nd birthday in 2020
On the 25th of May every year a small collection of fanatics across the world will walk out on the streets holding on their person a standard 30” by 56” towel. Some more devout followers might even put on pyjamas and a red bathrobe, screaming about how the answer to the question of life, the…
Books
Should we mourn GCSE poetry?
Ofqual’s decision to make GCSE poetry optional in 2021 has sparked mixed opinions, with the current Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, and other writers deeming it “a dangerous first step” in undermining the importance of the arts. Ofqual’s justification for their decision is that it will prevent students having to study complicated poems remotely. However, at…
Books, Venue
Leaving a fictional character’s identity ambiguous: harmful or helpful?
Genuine representation in literature has been a debated topic for a while now. We all (hopefully) agree representation is important for the voices of minority groups to be acknowledged, heard, and related to, but the technicalities of carrying this out are often contested. When it comes to the explicit representation of identities, readers tend to…