Northern School of Writing lecturer and playwright Stephen Hornby has just completed a tour of his new play The BBC’s First Homosexual. Previews of the show featured in The Guardian, BBC Radio Four’s The World Tonight and the Manchester Evening News. The director of the play is Oli Hurst, a performance alumni from the University […]
Multi-Award winning novelist Danielle Jawondo spoke to students at The Northern School of Writing on March 11th 2026. As an author from Manchester with a working-class background, Danielle inspired students studying Introduction to Children’s Literature with conversation about the vitality of YA publishing, its social influence on generations of readers and her own experience from […]
The Northern School of Writing’s Professor Jackie Kay was honoured to launch the National Year of Reading alongside Her Majesty The Queen in Scotland on Monday 19 January and take up the role of ambassador. The event featured other Scottish authors, local primary school children and Dennis the Menace (!), and took place at the National Library […]
Lecturer Kate Feld has new work in the Autumn/Winter 2025 edition of Irish literary journal Banshee. Her essay, ‘Slack Lane’, negotiates the experience of altered cognitive processing after a serious illness, during a winter drive around the Lancashire coast. It’s a haibun – a Japanese form that combines prose writing and haiku. “Banshee was a great fit for […]
At the Northern School of Writing, part of our core business is inspiring and lifting the voices of our working class creatives. None of us gets ahead without networking. Aviva Studios are running a valuable networking event for Working Class creatives on December 9th. Get involved by the following the link here.
Tell us about your ambition to work in archives, how did you discover you wanted to do this? When it came to looking at career choices in sixth form college, I had just decided I no longer wanted to be a lawyer and realised how much I loved organising, filing and spending time in libraries. I […]
Children’s Author Matt Lucas will be visiting The Northern School of Writing on Friday November 28 2025 to entertain over 300 school children as he launches his new children’s novel Bobland. Matt’s visit is a result of The Northern School of Writing’s partnership with The National Literacy Trust to support and celebrate Literacy in the […]
Our own Dr Szilvi Naray performed at Manchester Central Library last month as part of its Big Language Celebration Day. Szivli, a Lecturer in Drama and Translation Studies, spoke to an audience about the Hungarian language and how she has adapted plays into English before performing extracts from the play ‘The Dead Man’, which she […]
If you’ve ever thought that research might be dry and dull, Northern School of Writing poet Jardel Rodrigues has a message for you. Commissioned to celebrate Research Day at the University of Salford, Rodrigues’ poem impressed audiences so much, The University of Salford created a film with Jardel, which is launching on National Poetry Day […]
Stephen Sunderland’s debut novel has been snapped up by Canadian publisher Orbis Tertius. A surrealist work described by one reviewer as ‘crammed with erudition and entertainment’, The Cinema Beneath The Lake took shape as Stephen’s PhD project, under the supervision of Professors Scott Thurston and Ursula Hurley. Fans of experimental fiction can join Stephen and […]