Key Publications

Sarah Butler, Jack & Bet (Picador, 2020) Set against the backdrop of the contested demolition of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London, Jack and Bet, explores the changing face of London through the eyes of an elderly couple and a young immigrant.

David Cooper, The Routledge Handbook of Place (Routledge, 2020), edited by Tim Edensor, Ares Kalandides and Uma Kothari,presents a compendium of contemporary concerns and debates. Dr David Cooper, Co-Director of the Centre, has edited the section. ‘Creative Engagements with Place’, which includes his essay ‘Contemporary British Place Writing: Towards a Definition’.

Jean Sprackland, These Silent Mansions: A life in Graveyards (Penguin, 2020) is an elegant, exhilarating meditation on the relationship between the living and the dead, the nature of time and loss, and how – in this restless, accelerated world – we can connect the here with the elsewhere, the present with the past.

Tim Cresswell, Maxwell Street: Writing and Thinking Place (University of Chicago Press, 2019) What is the nature of place, and how does one undertake to write about it? To answer these questions, geographer and poet Tim Cresswell looks to Chicago’s iconic Maxwell Street Market area. In Maxwell Street, Cresswell advocates approaching the study of place as an “assemblage” of things, meanings, and practices. He models this innovative approach through a montage format that exposes the different types of texts—primary, secondary, and photographic sources—that have attempted to capture the essence of the area.

Helen Mort, Black Car Burning (Chattus & Windus 2019) this debut novel from the award-winning poet was described in the Guardian as ‘a love letter to Sheffield and the landscape that surrounds it.

Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre (John Murray, 2019) a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror. 

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Manchester Happened (Oneworld, 2019) A stunning new story collection from acclaimed author of Kintu and winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 and the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018. In this collection of short stories, Jennifer Makumbi speaks to the struggles of immigration. 

Minoli Salgado, Broken Jaw (The 87 Press, 2019) is a beautifully orchestrated collection of eighteen stories set mainly in Sri Lanka from a writer who has gained international recognition for her evocative representation of the trauma of war. This brave and passionate book not only speaks against silences - official and unofficial - but also tests the limits of what can be said, reminding us that though it may be 10 years since the civil war in the country ended, its legacy remains.

Cornerstones: Subterranean writings; from Dartmoor to the Arctic Circle (Little Toller Books, 2018) edited by Mark Smalley. In Cornerstones, some of Britain's leading landscape and nature writers consider their relationship with the ground beneath their feet. The Centre for Place Writing is proud that two contributors to this important anthology on place are connected to the centre, including Paul Evans and Helen Mort.

Paul Evans, How To See Nature (Pavillion Books, 2018) weaves historical, cultural and literary references with essays on the wildlife of the wasteland, tales from the riverbank, estuaries and seas, and the wildlife returned to Britain, such as wild boar and polecats, alongside landscapes as varied as a domestic garden or a wild moor. The book ends with an alphabetical bestiary, an idiosyncratic selection of British wildlife based on the author’s personal encounters.

Radical ESSEX (Cornerhouse Publications, 2018) seeks explores the less-known innovations and creativity of this English county. It examines living practices from Christian communities, retreats for Tolstoyan princes and the first practices of naturism in England, to radical University development, and social working estates in East Tilbury and Silver End. The book features work by prominent writers on place including Gillian Darley, Ken Worpole and Rachel Lichtenstein amongst many others. 

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Kintu (Oneworld, 2018) In this epic tale of fate, fortune and legacy, Jennifer Makumbi vibrantly brings to life this corner of Africa and this colourful family as she reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan. The year is 1750. Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda kingdom. Along the way he unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. Blending oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu's descendants as they seek to break free from the burden of their past to produce a majestic tale of clan and country - a modern classic.

Gregory Norminton (Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing), The Devil’s Highway (Fourth Estate, 2018) A Roman road, an Iron Age hill fort, a hand-carved flint, and a cycle of violence that must be broken. Spanning centuries, and combining elements of historical and speculative fiction with the narrative drive of pure thriller, this is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions about civilisation and evokes a deep sense of this ancient place in the heart of England over time.

Jean Sprackland, Green Noise (Penguin, 2018) is a poetry collection that enquires into the natural world and our human place in it, by investigating hidden worlds within worlds: oak-apples, aphid-farms, firewood teeming with small life. Others go in search of fragments of a mythic and often brutal past: the lost haunts of childhood, abandoned villages, scraps of shared history, which are only ever partially remembered.

Tim Cresswell, Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (Routledge, 2017) The "spatial turn" in literary studies is transforming the way we think of the field. The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space maps the key areas of spatiality within literary studies, offering a comprehensive overview but also pointing towards new and exciting directions of study. The interdisciplinary and global approach provides a thorough introduction and includes thirty-two essays, including this chapter by Tim Cresswell Elizabeth Bishop in and out of place: a topopoetic approach.

Paul Evans, Field Notes from the Edge: Journeys through Britain’s Secret Wilderness (Penguin, 2017) takes us on a journey through the in-between spaces of Nature – such as strandlines, mudflats, cliff tops and caves – where one wilderness is on the verge of becoming another and all things are possible. Combining a naturalist’s eye for observation with a poet’s ear for the lyrical, Field Notes from the Edge confirms Paul Evans's place among our leading nature writers today.

Andrew Michael Hurley, Devils Day (Hachette, 2017) BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, METRO AND MAIL ON SUNDAY. This follow-up novel to the multi-award winning The Loney deploys myth, horror and an evocative sense of the isolated landscape of the Lancashire valley, which is as much a character in the book as the protagonist John, whose family have lived in that place since the Norman Conquest.

Antony Rowland, M (Arc Publications, 2017) M is the third collection from Antony Rowland, Professor of Literary Studies in English at the University of Salford, whose work has been compared with poets as disparate as John Ashbery and Ezra Pound. The central sequence in M ('Manchester') responds to the murder in 2013 of Kieran Crump-Raiswell in Whalley Range, and tackles the contemporary themes of terrorism, industrial decline, and Icelandic violence. Ranging from Minorca to Cheetham Hill, Rowland's poetry covers a characteristic range of subjects and forms in what Peter Riley has termed 'an original and thoughtful handling of a major European modernist mode'. This collection also includes the poems that received the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2012.

David Cooper (Co-Director of the Centre, Senior Lecturer in English), Literary Mapping in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2016) edited by co-director of the centre Dr David Cooper and Christopher Donaldson and Patricia Murrieta-Flores is a pioneering collection of essays that explore how geospatial technologies are revolutionizing the discipline of literary studies. This collection provides an account of the current field, informs about the critical and creative potentials of digital literary mapping, showcases the work of exemplary literary mapping projects and provides an overview of the tools, techniques and methods those projects employ.

Rachel Lichtenstein, Estuary: Out from London to the Sea (Penguin, 2016) is a social history and deep examination of the Thames Estuary by co-director of the centre Dr Rachel Lichtenstein. Longlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize in 2017, this hauntingly beautiful book, explores the haunted salt marshes, coastal shallows and wide-open skies of this ancient waterway with stories from an extraordinary chorus of voices, from mud larkers, fishermen, radio pirates and champion racers. 

Helen Mort, No Map Could Show Them (Penguin, 2016) The poems of Helen Mort's second collection offer an unforgettable perspective on the heights we scale and the distances we run, the routes we follow and the paths we make for ourselves.

Sarah Butler (lecturer in Creative Writing), Before The Fire (Picador, 2015) The story of a young man from a north Manchester estate in the summer of the English riots of 2011, Before The Fire explores home, gentrification and the urban edgelands of Manchester.

Sarah Butler (lecturer in Creative Writing), Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love (Picador, 2014) is a unique story of love lost and found, of rootlessness and homecoming and the power of the ties that bind. It is a story for fathers and daughters everywhere. It is also a story about London, the gritty, damp underbelly of the city is strongly evoked throughout. Described as 'a love letter to London', Ten Things I've Learnt About Love explores how we might feel at home on the streets of a city more than between the four walls of a house.

Visiting Professor of Place Writing Tim Cresswell, PLACE: A Short Introduction (Blackwell Publishing, 2014) Place is one of the most fundamental concepts in human geography. This short introduction marries familiar everyday uses of the term with the more complex theoretical debates that have grown up around it.

Andrew Michael Hurley (Lecturer in Creative Writing), The Loney (originally published in 2014 Tartarus Press, then republished by John Murray 2015). The novel won the 2015 Costa ‘First Novel’ award, the 2016 British Book Industry awards for ‘Debut Novel’ and ‘Book of the Year.’ The Loney has been translated into almost twenty languages and is currently being developed as a feature film. This gothic novel powerfully evokes the location of the bleak Lancashire coastline within a haunting and powerfully weird tale.

Minoli Salgado, Little Dust on the Eyes (Peepal Tree Press, 2014) The bustle of an English seaside resort gives way to the unreal calm of a coastal community in southern Sri Lanka as Savi and Renu, two cousins separated by civil war, are reunited just weeks before the tsunami strikes. Renu is struggling to find evidence that will bring political killers to justice; Savi is struggling to heal the damage wrought by a broken childhood. They are just catching up with the secrets of the past when the past catches up with them. This haunting and richly textured novel of intersecting lives, memory and loss confronts the twin tragedies of a brutal civil war and the Boxing Day tsunami, revealing the intimate connections between silence and violence, displacement and desire.