Profile

My writing covers different prose genres, in both fiction and nonfiction. One theme that runs across them is the way the traumas of war are passed on through generations. Travel features strongly too, and investigations of spiritual subjects including sacred mountains of the world; shamanism; Hindu devotional practices; and the emergence of Zen Buddhism as a force in the west. My most recent biography, of the scientist J.S.Haldane, Suffer & Survive (Simon & Schuster), was awarded First Prize, Basis of Medicine in the 2008 BMA Book Awards. My most recent novel Look Who's Watching (Caffeine Nights, 2011) is a supernatural thriller drawing on Buddhist notions of reincarnation with the theme of media manipulation of the news. As Director of the Philip Larkin Centre, I have been honoured to draw many of the world’s finest writers into public conversation about their work. The Centre’s work includes a Children’s Writing Series (most recently featuring Emma Thompson and David Almond) and a Man Booker Prize Initiative (all new students given D.B.C.Pierre’s Vernon God Little before meeting the writer).

Selected Publications

Novels

• Look Who's Watching, Caffiene Nights, 2011
• Slippery When Wet, Transita, 2006
• On Bended Knees, Macmillan, 1992 (Whitbread shortlisted)

Non fiction

• Suffer & Survive: The Extreme Life of J.S.Haldane, Simon & Schuster, 2007
• Mentoring for Creative Writers, with Sara Maitland for New Writing North/Arts Council England, 2007
• On Sacred Mountains, Heart of Albion, 2002
• I Was Carlos Castaneda, Three Rivers / Random House, 2001
• In Search of the Divine Mother, Harper Collins, 1998

Drama

• Feeding the Roses, performance by the Virtual Theatre Project at Wake Forest University, 2007 – winner in the ‘Pen is a Mighty Sword’ playwriting competition.

Recent Stories / Articles

• ‘Mom, in Passing’ Short Fiction, Issue 5, 2011
• 'My Tri-athlete', The International Literary Quarterly, Issue 10, February 2010
• ‘Letters to the Parishioners’, The Edinburgh Review, January 2009
• ‘India, by design’, The Edinburgh Review, January 2007
• ‘Zimbabwe through its Writers’, The Edinburgh Review, October 2006
• ‘Writing in Zimbabwe’, The Guardian, March 2006
• ‘Three Tales,’ Gravitas, 2005
• Chapter in Teonanacatl: Sacred Mushroom of Visions, Four Trees Press, 2004
• ‘The Lovely Life of Arnold’, Harrington Quarterly, Vol 5, #1, 2003
• ‘Everything I Am,’ Blithe House Quarterly, 2003

Research

A common theme through my fiction and nonfiction is the inheritance of war guilt by succeeding generations. I am a member of the War and Displacement Research Network. Through interviews with writers, I investigate current trends in writers’ craft. As the biographer of J.S.Haldane I maintain an interest in his areas of physiological investigation, particularly in relation to oxygen treatments developed through World War I, and his series of high-altitude experiments on Pikes Peak in 1911. As an extension of that I investigate a wider range of issues related to health care and creative writing. My new biographical subject is the Japanese-American Zen master Maezumi, and the way his lineage is impacting western society through the integration and re-conception of Soto Zen.

Teaching

I teach courses from first year undergraduate modules, through the Creative Writing MA course, to PhD. I currently supervise four students on the PhD Creative Writing programme: two novelists, one playwright, and one nonfiction writer. I hold supervisory sessions in London as well as Hull and I am happy to consider supervisions in distance learning mode.

Administration

Director of Larkin Centre for Poetry and Creative Writing