New novella from Sarah Dobbs

A new novella by Dr Sarah Dobbs is due out in the autumn. The Sea Inside Me (Unthank Books) is set in an England ravaged by civil strife and terrorism. An experimental zone, Newark-by-the-Sea has trialed the Process, the removal of traumatic memories to eliminate crime and fear from the minds of its citizens. Processing Officer Audrey is instructed to tail Candy, a girl resistant to the Process, whose memories are returning, As the Process is about to be rolled out countrywide, a darker, deep-rooted conspiracy coils smoke-like into view. Read more about this title on Unthank Book's website.

Sunderland Literature Festival 2017

Once again, several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Libraries Literature Festival (download the full programme here). These events feature our staff/students:

Colin Younger (Senior Lecturer): Expressive Writing as Therapy, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 10th October 3-4.30pm

This workshop will explore expressive writing approaches to support mental health well-being as part of Mental Health Day.

Dr Alison Younger (Senior Lecturer): Folklore and Fable in the North East, Houghton Library, 16th October 2-3pm
This session will explore the extraordinary folklore and fables of North East England.

Short Story Competition Launch, Waterstones, The Bridges, 16th October 5pm
In association with Waterstones, the University of Sunderland will launch a Short Story Competition.

Dr Geoff Nash (Senior Lecturer): The Gothic Terrorist: from Robespierre to Jihadi John City, Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 18th October 5-6.30pm
Gothic, terrorism, and the terrorist are rarely linked - why is this? Geoff Nash addresses the question by tracing a Gothic dimension to images of terror coming out of the political violence of the French Revolution, analysing the appearance of the anarchist terrorist in late nineteenth century fiction, and discerning in stories and journalism about contemporary terrorists and terrorist groups the hated/desired figure of the Gothic outsider.

Colin Younger (Senior Lecturer): The Hero’s Journey: How to Write a Best Seller, Washington Town Centre Library, 21st October 11-12.30pm

The Hero’s Journey is a concept at the heart of many stories and by following the structure you too will be able to write your own best seller.

Dr Sarah Dobbs (Senior Lecturer): Prosegression, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 28th October 1-3pm
This session explores and pushes the boundaries of prose fiction, giving all writers new and exciting structures to work from. After the session, feel free to submit work from the workshop for consideration for a new journal in prose fiction - Prosegression, which is coming soon. Peer reviewers include flash fiction experts David Gaffney, Tania Hersham and the world’s first professor in short fiction, Professor Ailsa Cox.

Spectral Visions Press Book Launch, Holmeside Coffee, Holmeside, 31st October 6pm
Spectral Visions Press is an innovative publishing house located at the University of Sunderland. It specialises in publishing outstanding works of creative writing, niche pieces, and writing concerned with, and inspired by, Gothic literature and Gothic studies. To include ‘Tyne And Wear’d’ and ‘A Bestiary of Monsters.’ Pay bar available.

Philippa Abbott (Doctoral student): The Struggle of the Female Victorian Underclass, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 1st November 5-6.30pm
‘The Angel in the House’ was the ideal to which many Victorian women were expected to aspire. However for those at the lowest end of the social scale, this ideal was unattainable as with no money they could not feed their family and had to go out to work. Mrs Sheppard (from William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard 1839) contradicts some of the assumptions made by Victorian society and highlights the struggles that women of the lower and underclasses battled with on a daily basis.

Steve Watts (Head of School of Culture): John Buchan, Richard Hannay and The 39 Steps, City Library@ Museum & Winter Gardens, 2nd November 10-11.30am
An exploration of the extraordinary life of John Buchan with an introduction to his most enduring character, the irrepressible Richard ‘Dick’ Hannay, acknowledged as the forerunner and inspiration for 007 James Bond through this classic novel.

Dr Peter Hayes (Senior Lecturer): Scott Joplin: The Triumph of the Tragedy of his Opera, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 3rd November 2-4pm
Scott Joplin is famous for his piano ragtime. However, Joplin also aspired to be an opera composer and wrote two operas, one of which, Treemonisha, still survives. Treemonisha folded after a single performance in New York, and its failure is said to have contributed to Joplin’s early death. A surprising connection between Sunderland and Scott Joplin will be revealed and explained in a combined lecture on Joplin’s life and performance of some of his works.

Great Writing Conference 2017

Dr Sarah Dobbs will be giving a paper at the 'Great Writing Conference 2017', to be held at Imperial College, London. She will be exploring three key areas within the filmic representation of Arrival (2016). One, how does the film's fictive space encourage the consideration of the viewers' own motivations in concrete, everyday reality? Two, how do some of the film’s key conceits (such as translating a language and the idea that language may construct identity; the decision to have a child with the knowledge that they will die from a terminal illness) invite our questions about our own perspectives and choices in various aspects of our lives? Finally, if we allow this supposition to stand, how can we be aware of the implications of the constructions of our own fictional narratives and the real-world consequences of these?

New fiction by Sarah Dobbs

Creative writing lecturer Dr Sarah Dobbs has recently published three short stories. 'Burning the Ants' was commissioned for Unthank's collection The End, along with contributors Professor Ailsa Cox and AJ Ashworth, who also attended the Sunderland launch of the collection in the recent Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival. All stories are phrased around images provided by London artist Nicholas Rushton, exploring narrative and emotional responses to the notion of 'the end'. Her other recent short fictions, 'The Imaginary Wife' and 'As Linda was Buying the Flowers' are featured in Unthank's unthology 8 and 9 respectively.

Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival 2016

Several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival this autumn. Click on the links below to find out who will be doing what and where. The festival starts on September 30th (the full schedule is here).

Spectral Visions book launch

Against the Grayne: Learning about your Reiver ancestry

Witchcraft and wizardry in Wearside

Northern Gothic: Jane Harvey's The Castle at Tynemouth (1806)

Eternity in an hour: William Blake and popular music

Gothic Wearside

World books to read before you die

Apples and Snakes performance poetry

Flash Fiction in a flash: how to write it and how to get it published

Reading philosophy to lose weight

The terrorist novel from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to Hamid Mohsen's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Of Peter and Jemima: An introduction to the extraordinary life of Beatrix Potter

'Not quite a Geordie': The ethnonyms of North East England

Wizards, goblins and forbidden love: Sir Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel

'My own, my native land'

University of Sunderland and Waterstones short story competition

A fatal North East marriage: Mad Lord Byron and the Princess of Parallelograms

Halloween guided fantasy

Dr Sarah Dobbs joins the Department of Culture

The Department of Culture is delighted to announce that Dr Sarah Dobbs has been appointed as lecturer in English and Creative Writing. Sarah won a Funds For Women Graduates (FfWG)  award to complete her PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University in 2011. Her PhD explored coma as fictional space, crime, culture and masculinity and the femme fatale. Her PhD novel, Killing Daniel (Unthank Books), was published in 2012 and she recently edited and co-authored a textbook, English Language, Literature and Creative Writing: A Practical Guide for Students (Anthem Press, 2014). Previous work has been broadcast by the BBC, performed at Bolton Octagon and Cambridge ADC theatres, and published in Flax, Stepaway magazine and Litro. She is currently at work on a novel that considers the relationship between apocalyptic fiction, illness and assisted dying.

Sarah has previously taught at Lancaster, Manchester Metropolitan University, Edge Hill and the Open University, as well as on the Guardian Masterclass series. Her novel was nominated for the Guardian Not the Booker award and her short fiction for the Pushcart Prize. You can read some of her work here, here, here and here.