Wolverhampton Literature Festival

At the end of January 2025, the city of Wolverhampton comes alive with all things literature, as Wolverhampton Literature Festival puts on a weekend of amazing talks, readings and workshops.

Included in the bill of amazing headline guests are our own lecturers and students from English Literatures, Creative and Professional Writing and English Language and Linguistics.

Dr Rob Francis, Programme Leader for the Humanities Subjects, said "For a number of years now we've been on the front line of some the most innovative research and teaching throughout English Literature, Creative Writing and Linguistics - connecting the local with the international in deep and immersive ways. So, this is a great chance for us to show all of that off".

Here's a run down of all the cool things we're doing:

Come and see the cutting-edge voices of contemporary fiction and poetry. In this series of performances, students and graduates from the Creative and Professional Writing degrees at the University of Wolverhampton will read from their own work at the Student Showcase

Creative and Professional Writing Lecturer, Dr Kerry Hadley-Pryce, will be launching her next novel, Lie of the Land, at this In-Conversation event.

Based on his creative project and Waybook, The Chain Coral Chorus, R.M. Francis will give a poet's eye view of Black Country landscapes and explore how the geology of the region can enable and energise new creative place-writing in this Geopoetic Workshop.

Professor Sebastian Groes will be running a writing workshop based on his incredible Stroke memoir, Right in the Head, and his innovative research projects, called Write in the Head

Novelist, Tiffany Murray, will also be in conversation with Professor Sebastian Groes discussing their memoirs My Family and Other Rock Stars and Right in the Head

Storyteller and Medievalist, Dr Daisy Black, presents the remarkable thirteenth-century tale of Yde, who dresses herself as a knight and cuts her own paths to freedom. A tale of disguise adventure, gender fluidity, straight-talking angels, and the power of queer love in Yde and Olive.

Join our Linguist and Black Country dialect expert, Dr Esther Asprey for this interactive dialect badge making session, Last Words.

Rob continues, "Part of our vision for our school and our city is to change attitudes and turn the region into a place synonymous with literature and culture that embraces and sends out the important messages of the Transnational and Transcultural. English at the University of Wolverhampton has international regionalism at its heart".

 Wolverhampton Literature Festival runs from 31 January to 2 February 2025.