Online Masterclasses
Every year, students studying our Northern School of Writing degrees meet with writers and creative industry professionals to discuss lives in the arts and creative industries. Some of these classes are captured online and can be viewed by students at the University of Salford. University Login required after the link.
Sarah Bernstein is a Canadian writer and scholar. She was born in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives in Scotland where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has taught at the universities of Sheffield, Edinburgh and Strathclyde.
Her collection of prose poems Now Comes the Lightning appeared in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Writing. Her debut novel The Coming Bad Days was published in 2021. Her next novel, Study for Obedience, was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and won the 2023 Giller Prize.
In 2023, Bernstein was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young writers in Britain.
Louise Fein writes historical fiction, focusing on unheard voices or from unusual perspectives. Her debut novel, Daughter of the Reich (entitled People Like Us in the UK edition) was published in 2020 into 13 territories and is set in 1930’s Leipzig. The book was shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2021 and the RNA Historical Novel of the Year Award, 2021. Louise’s second novel, The Hidden Child, was published in 2021 and is centered around the eugenics movement in 1920’s England and America. It was a Globe & Mail bestseller in Canada. Her third novel, The London Bookshop Affair, about one woman’s journey to uncover secrets of her past, set against a backdrop of espionage and looming nuclear war in 1962 London, will be published in January 2024.
David Gaffney David Gaffney is the author of the novels Never Never (2008), All The Places I’ve Ever Lived (2017) and Out Of The Dark (2021), and the flash fiction and short story collections Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has published two graphic novels with Dan Berry – The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head (2018) and Rivers (2021) – and is working on a third. He published a chapbook, The Country Pub, with Nightjar Press in 2022, a new short story collection with Salt Publishing, Concrete Fields in 2023, and his pamphlet, Whale, is out on Osmosis Press in 2024. In this masterclass, David reads from one of his graphic novels in a multimedia presentation and discusses juggling life as a writer and Arts Council grants manager.
Rikki Beadle-Blair Masterclass
Richard Barrington “Rikki” Beadle-Blair is a British actor, director, and playwright. He is the artistic director of multi-media production company Team Angelica. Beadle-Blair wrote the screenplay for the 1995 feature film Stonewall. He adapted his own screenplay of Stonewall for the stage and his production company Team Angelica, which he took to the 2007 Edinburgh Festival. He also directed, produced, designed both sets & costumes, & choreographed on the show. The play was nominated for “Best Ensemble” at The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.
Beadle-Blair was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
Ryan Davis is a writer, producer and filmmaker. He has developed TV and Film projects with Blumhouse, Mammoth Screen, NBCUniversal, Secret Hideout, Stigma Films and Kudos TV. In 2019 he wrote and co-produced his first short film, “3ft From the Other Side”. He wrote and produced his first feature film, a contained thriller, called “Fixed” in 2021. In 2022 Fixed was nominated for a National Film Award in the Best Thriller Award category, and three Midlands Movie Awards, winning Best Lead for Nick Clarke as Daz. In 2023 Fixed won Best Feature Film at The Northampton Film Festival. In 2023 he directed and produced his first docu-short “The Black Country Cowboy”. It was nominated for the Best Short Documentary at the Louth International Film Festival and Golden Eyes Film Festival 2023. The Black Country Cowboy won Best Short Documentary at the London Independent Film Festival 2024.
Ruth is the founder and CEO of ‘RECLAIM’, a Manchester based youth leadership charity. Previously, Ruth was a teacher in a Manchester state school whose young people obtained some of the best GCSE results in the country. Ruth was also a member of the Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour. In 2016, Ruth was listed in The Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential people in the UK, and was also listed by Virgin and Ashoka as one of the top six female changemakers internationally. Ruth is an Ashoka UK Fellow. Ruth founded Rekindle, a school in Manchester run by youth, for youth, and the Roots programme, connecting people across cultural divides.
Lauren Howard is a project Editor at John Murray Press, part of Hachette group, the world’s largest publisher. She has worked as an assistant editor at Vintage (Penguin), and is a member of the board of the Charlotte Aitken trust, in which capacity she is helping to develop a mentoring programme in Liverpool. She has worked on popular non-fiction titles including the autobiographies of Billy Connolly, Monty Don and Jeremy Hardy.