Welcome to the Creative Writing Subject Guide
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Most of our journal articles are available in digital format.
For targeted searching, select a research database and explore the published literature in your field. Key databases are flagged in the Research Databases tab above.
On the app (or via your browser) you can save your favourites to your bookshelf, get notified about new issues, sort your articles into collections and connect to Library Search.
These are just a few examples of the titles available to you. Look on Library Search or your module's reading list for more.
The Penguin book of the contemporary British short story by 
That Glimpse of Truth by
Profound, lyrical, shocking, wise: the short story is capable of almost anything. This collection of 100 of the finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal. Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover. Here are childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures, Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates. Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, Muriel Spark and Colm Tóibín, THAT GLIMPSE OF TRUTH is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.
The Story by
Witty, heartbreaking, shocking, satirical: the short story can excite or sadden, entice or repulse. The one thing it can never be is dull. Now Victoria Hislop, passionate ambassador for the art of the short story, has collected 100 stories from her favourite women writers into one volume. Here are Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates, well-known feminists and famous wits, national treasures and rising stars. All handpicked by one of the nation's best-loved novelists, there's a story for every mood, mind-set and moment in life. Featuring an all star cast of authors including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Penelope Fitzgerald, Miranda July, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield, Alice Munro, Dorothy Parker and Virginia Woolf, THE STORY is the biggest and most beautiful collectino of women's short fiction in print today.
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories by
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories , edited by A. S. Byatt, herself the author of several collections of short stories, is the first anthology to specifically take the English short story as its theme. The 37 stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,ranging from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan, though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing.There are all sorts of threads of connection and contrast running through these stories. Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical. There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour,English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy. There are examples of social realism, from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories and tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy and science fiction. There are stories of sensibility, precisely delineated, from Hardy'sreluctant bride to the shocked heroine of Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush, from H. E. Bates's brilliant fusion of class, sex, death, and landscape, to D. H. Lawrence's exploration of a consciousness slowly detaching itself from its world. There are exuberant stories by Saki and Waugh, Wodehouse andFirbank, with a particularly English range from high irony to pure orchestrated farce.The very range and scope of the collection celebrates the eccentric differences and excellences of English short stories. Some of A. S. Byatt's choices clearly take their place in the grand tradition of story-telling, while others are more unusual. Many break all the rules of unity of tone andnarrative, appearing to be one kind of story before unexpectedly turning into another. They pack together comedy and tragedy, farce and delicacy, elegance and the grotesque, with language as various as the subject matter. As A. S. Byatt explains: 'My only criterion was that those stories I selectedshould be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement, aesthetic or narrative'.
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories by
Contains works from thirty-four of Britain's contemporary writers. This book includes stories of love and crime, stories touched with comedy and the supernatural, and stories set in London, Los Angeles, Bucharest and Tokyo.
The New Granta Book of the American Short Story by
In 1992, Richard Ford edited and introduced the first Granta Book of the American Short Story . It became the definitive anthology of American short fiction written in the last half of the twentieth century--an "exemplary choice" in the words of The Washington Post --with stories by Eudora Welty, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and forty others demonstrating how much memorable power can lie in the briefest narration. In the years since, Ford has been reading new stories and rereading old ones and selecting new favorites. This new collection features more than forty stories, including some he regretted overlooking the first time around, as well as many by a new generation of writers--among them Sherman Alexie, Junot D#65533;az, Deborah Eisenberg, Nell Freudenberger, Matthew Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Z. Z. Packer. None of the stories (though a few of the writers) were in the first volume. Once again, Ford's introduction is an illuminating exposition of how a good story is written by a master of the craft.
Hero with a Thousand Faces by
Since its release in 1949,The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world's mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction. As part of the Joseph Campbell Foundation's Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, this third edition features expanded illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography, and more accessible sidebars. As relevant today as when it was first published,The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences in fields ranging from religion and anthropology to literature and film studies. The book has also profoundly influenced creative artists--including authors, songwriters, game designers, and filmmakers--and continues to inspire all those interested in the inherent human need to tell stories.
The Art of Dramatic Writing by
Lajos Egri examines a play from the inside out, starting with the heart of any drama: its characters. For it is people - their private natures and their inter-relationships - that move a story and give it life. All good dramatic writing depends upon an understanding of human motives. Why do people act as they do? What forces transform a coward into a hero, a hero into a coward? What is it that Romeo does early in Shakespeare's play that makes his later suicide seem inevitable? Why must Nora leave her husband at the end of A Doll's House? These are a few of the fascinating problems which Egri analyzes. He shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise - a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behaviour - and to develop his dramatic conflict on the basis of that behaviour. Premise, character, conflict: this is Egri's ABC. His book is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in a literary creation.
The Instinctive Screenplay by
What is it that makes humans engage with a dramatic narrative? Is it linked to our primitive selves, contained within our instinctive experience? This innovative text argues that understanding how and why our human instincts are brought into play as we watch screen drama is the key to writing it. Analysing four powerful instincts - willpower, logic, morality and emotion - Sam North explores how they determine our level of involvement in their drama, and how screenwriters can use them to develop their craft. Including a variety of both well-known and less famous examples, from The Shawshank Redemption to Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple, this book offers a fresh new approach to thinking about, discussing and writing screenplays.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves--and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage * "[A] worship song to writers and readers."--Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art--namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.
A Critical Introduction by
Throughout this text, Valerie Shaw addresses two key questions: 'What are the special satisfactions afforded by reading short stories?' and 'How are these satisfactions derived from each story's literary techniques and narrative strategies?'. She then attempts to answer these questions by drawing on stories from different periods and countries - by authors who were also great novelists, like Henry James, Flaubert, Kafka and D.H. Lawrence; by authors who specifically dedicated themselves to the art of the short story, like Kipling, Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield; by contemporary practitioners like Angela Carter and Jorge Luis Borges; and by unfairly neglected writers like Sarah Orne Jewett and Joel Chandler Harris.
Reading Like a Writer by
Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
Handbook of Creative Writing by
The inspirational resource for tutors, students and other creative writing professionals, now in a new edition. 54 chapters cover the 3 central areas of writing creatively: theories of creativity; the craft of writing; and creative writing as a business. With contributions from over 50 experts - poets, novelists, dramatists, publishers, editors, tutors, critics and scholars - from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia, this is the essential guide to writing, and getting published, in the English-speaking world. New for this edition: Chapters: on 'indie publishing', 'social media', 'flash fiction', 'song lyrics and poetry', 'creative critical hybrids' & 'collaboration in the theatre' Revised chapters on Making a Living as a Writer, Theories of Creativity, and Writing for the Web Chapters updated to reflect changes in teaching, copyright & earning a living as a writer Updated Glossary of Terms Key Features A 3-in-1 text with outstanding breadth and depth of coverage Grounds the subject of creative writing and provides writing-related tasks Full of examples of ways to approach and improve your writing Valuable practical advice on getting published & making a living from your writing
The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing by
Creative writing has become a highly professionalised academic discipline, with popular courses and prestigious degree programmes worldwide. This book is a must for all students and teachers of creative writing, indeed for anyone who aspires to be a published writer. It engages with a complex art in an accessible manner, addressing concepts important to the rapidly growing field of creative writing, while maintaining a strong craft emphasis, analysing exemplary models of writing and providing related writing exercises. Written by professional writers and teachers of writing, the chapters deal with specific genres or forms - ranging from the novel to new media - or with significant topics that explore the cutting edge state of creative writing internationally (including creative writing and science, contemporary publishing and new workshop approaches).
Meander, Spiral, Explode by
"How lovely to discover a book on the craft of writing that is also fun to read . . . Alison asserts that the best stories follow patterns in nature, and by defining these new styles she offers writers the freedom to explore but with enough guidance to thrive." ―Maris Kreizman, Vulture A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 | A Poets & Writers Best Books for Writers As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: "For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel― one we're actually told to follow―and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides . . . But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?" W. G. Sebald's Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc--or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her "museum of specimens" include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison. Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.
Some useful resources for creative writing modules may include literary reviews. You can find these in the sources below:
You can narrow your search results to book reviews when searching JSTOR:
You can narrow your search results to book reviews when searching ProQuest One Literature:
Select 'review' from document type:
Online and print access to the interviews and articles in Paris Review is available via Library Search
The University has access to an extensive range of online primary source materials. These contain digitised copies of documents, letters, books, photographs and other primary sources.
The Primary Sources Libguide will help you identify the best databases for your research.
We have literary manuscripts, reviews and literary magazines, collections of novels, short stories and poems. See the Art and Literature section on the Primary Sources guide for some more resources.
These are just some of the online collections you can access - there are many more!
We have a small collection of audiobooks, available for you to borrow from our Overdrive platform and the Libby app.
Where available, links to Overdrive e-books and/or audiobooks will appear on your reading list.
You can also see our collection here: https://exeteruk.overdrive.com/
How do I use Overdrive?
To search for books and borrow items you need to sign in to Overdrive using your University email address and password.
You can:
N.B. This is separate to your borrowing allowances on your University library account.
Click on your account or the bookshelf icon to view your loans, holds, and borrowing history.
Alternatively, you can do this in the Libby app - there are more instructions here.
A reference resource, such as an encyclopedia, dictionary, guide, or volume of literary criticism, provides general background information on a topic. High quality reference works produced by scholars are an excellent place to start your research, and can give you give a useful overview of a subject.
Includes the Historical Thesaurus, where you can explore synonyms of a word over time, arranged chronologically. Use the OED video guides for more information.
A wide range of sound, video and audio resources are available to help bring drama, poetry and prose to life.
Find out more on the English: which resources do I use? guide
In some cases, material you want to consult may not be available to you at Exeter.
You will be using vast literature databases which feature many millions of resources from around the world. There are a number of options that may be of assistance to connect you with the information you need.
This service can be used to request books/journal articles from other libraries.
Students can make book suggestions to the Library. Submit requests online and they will be reviewed by the library. If the book is unlikely to be used by others after your dissertation work, then you may be directed to the Document Delivery scheme instead, for short term access to material.
Use this service to search across the book and journal collections of the UK research and specialist libraries.
You can search to see if copies of books/journals are available in other libraries that you could visit whilst at home over the vacation, or by a special trip. Always check the access requirements before you travel, if you wish to visit another library. Find out more about visiting other libraries.
Use Library Search to look for particular works of poetry.
You can also try searching some of our databases, such as:
These are just a few examples of the titles available to you. Look on Library Search or your module's reading list for more.
Making of a Poem by
"Concise, learned, revisionary... should enrich the passionate conversation about poetic forms for years to come."-- Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry Two of our foremost poets provide here a lucid, straightforward primer that "looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form": a book for readers who have always felt that an understanding of form (sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, among others) would enhance their appreciation of poetry. Tracing "the exuberant history of forms," they devote one chapter to each form, offering explanation, close reading, and a rich selection of examplars that amply demonstrate the power and possibility of that form.
Poetry: the Basics by
Now in its third edition Poetry: The Basics remains an engaging exploration of the world of poetry. Drawing on examples ranging from Chaucer to children's rhymes, Cole Porter to Carol Ann Duffy, and from around the English-speaking world, it shows how any reader can understand and gain more pleasure from poetry. Exploring poetry's relationship to everyday language and introducing major genres and technical aspects in an accessible way, it is a clear introduction to how different types of poetry work through the study of details and of whole poems. With a revised chapter on the different practices and ideas in the writing of poetry now, including sections on film poetry and digital poetics, this is a must read for all students of English Literature.
These are just a few examples of the titles available to you. Look on Library Search or your module's reading list for more.
How to Read a Poem by
Lucid, entertaining and full of insight, How To Read A Poem is designed to banish the intimidation that too often attends the subject of poetry, and in doing so to bring it into the personal possession of the students and the general reader. Offers a detailed examination of poetic form and its relation to content. Takes a wide range of poems from the Renaissance to the present day and submits them to brilliantly illuminating closes analysis. Discusses the work of major poets, including John Milton, Alexander Pope, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, W.H.Auden, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and many more. Includes a helpful glossary of poetic terms.
The Poetry Handbook by
This volume is a lucid and entertaining guide to the poet's craft, and an invaluable introduction to practical criticism for students. Chapters on each element of poetry offer a wide-ranging general account and end by looking at different poems, to build up sustained analytical readings. The second edition--fully revised, expanded, updated, and supported by a new companion website--confirm The Poetry Handbook as the best guide to poetry available in English.
Poetry: the Basics by
Now in its third edition Poetry: The Basics remains an engaging exploration of the world of poetry. Drawing on examples ranging from Chaucer to children's rhymes, Cole Porter to Carol Ann Duffy, and from around the English-speaking world, it shows how any reader can understand and gain more pleasure from poetry. Exploring poetry's relationship to everyday language and introducing major genres and technical aspects in an accessible way, it is a clear introduction to how different types of poetry work through the study of details and of whole poems. With a revised chapter on the different practices and ideas in the writing of poetry now, including sections on film poetry and digital poetics, this is a must read for all students of English Literature.
The Poetry Toolkit by
Now thoroughly revamped with a diverse selection of poetic voices from the last fifty years, this third edition of Rhian Williams's bestselling book, The Poetry Toolkit guides readers through key terms, genres and concepts that help them to develop a richer, more sophisticated approach to reading, thinking and writing about poetry. Combining an easy-to-use reference format with in-depth practice readings and further exercises, the book helps students master the study of poetry for themselves. As well as featuring more contemporary voices, the 3rd edition of The Poetry Toolkit includes an expanded practical section giving guidance on close reading, comparative reading and advice on writing critically about poetry. In addition, the book is accompanied by a companion website offering audio recordings of poetry readings, weblinks and overviews of key theoretical approaches to support advanced study. Head to bloomsbury.com/Williams-the-poetry-toolkit for a host of additional resources.
These are just a few examples of the titles available to you. Look on Library Search or your module's reading list for more.
Staying Alive by
An anthology of 500 brilliant poems, that presents a totally new view of contemporary poetry.
How to Disappear by
How to Disappear shines a torch into the dark corners and finds a world inhabited by the missing and the dead, by monsters and wounded beasts, discarded dreams and the memories of strangers - a trawl through the apparently empty spaces and what might be found there. At its heart is the narrative sequence Room of Leaves. It is 1959. Grace, at last, falls in love. Jilted at the altar, she sets up home in the garden of her mother's bungalow and waits, for thirty years, in a world of birds and bright umbrellas, for Frank to return...
The Harbour Beyond the Movie by
Shortlisted for The Forward Poetry Prize 2007. Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet, critic and short-fiction writer. He works as a research student and assistant teacher at the University of Exeter. He is an award-winning man.His first award-winning collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers was published by Stride Books in 2005 and won an award. He has worked as regional editor for Succour, a biannual journal of poetry and short fiction based at the University of Sussex and as an associated reader for The Kenyon Review. He is currently reviews editor of Exultations and Difficulties. His award-winning poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals. He exists in a permanent state of award-winning; he is like a giant magnet for awards or, if awards are moths, a giant light.His award-winning work for the stage has been written with and performed by the theatre company Pegabovine in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Scarborough (as part of the National Student Drama Festival, 2003 and 2004, wherein it won an award) and at the Edinburgh International Fringe (wherein it did not win an award). The Sunday Times described their work as "wit of a different order", but did not specify which one. Chortle magazine described it as "delightful" - which is probably less equivocal. He is constantly decorated for his achievements in the form of awards - which he has won, does win and will continue to win, because he is a winner. What a guy.Luke Kennard is tall, nervous, polite and frequently scorches the end of his nose. He was educated at Holyrood Community School and the University of Exeter. He is married and lives in Devon, birthplace of the memorial bench. Essentially a lower-middle class purist, his favourite canapé is the cocktail sausage roll. He will probably have rosettes and medals incorporated into his gravestone, somehow.Luke Kennard, award-winner, won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2005. This has been described as a travesty and a slap in the face for writers of genuine talent. Ever since he has been forced to travel under a false name and wear nose-moustache-glasses for fear of being assaulted by embittered poets, young and old. I suppose he could just smash them in the head with one of his awards. He was received by the Orthodox church in 2006 and is working on his humility.
The Kids by
Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are fictionalised portraits of 'The Kids', the students she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social class, gender and race - and their fundamental intersection with education - are investigated with an ever critical and introspective eye. These boisterous and musical poems explore the universal experience of what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach.
Surge by
**Winner of the 2020 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award** Jay Bernard's extraordinary debut is a fearless exploration of the New Cross Fire of 1981, a house fire at a birthday party in which thirteen young black people were killed. Dubbed the 'New Cross Massacre', the fire was initially believed to be a racist attack, and the indifference with which the tragedy was met by the state triggered a new era of race relations in Britain. Tracing a line from New Cross to the 'towers of blood' of the Grenfell fire, this urgent collection speaks with, in and of the voices of the past, brought back by the incantation of dancehall rhythms and the music of Jamaican patois, to form a living presence in the absence of justice. A ground-breaking work of excavation, memory and activism - both political and personal, witness and documentary - Surge shines a much-needed light on an unacknowledged chapter in British history, one that powerfully resonates in our present moment. 'The verse has anger and political purpose, but a rare lyrical precision, too. The combination is powerful' Sebastian Faulks, Spectator, Books of the Year 2020 *Winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry* *Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award; T.S. Eliot Prize; Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Dylan Thomas Prize; RSL Ondaatje Prize; John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize* *Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2020*
Identity Parade by
'Identity Parade' presents new British and Irish poetry at a time of great vibrancy and variety. It is the first anthology to comprehensively represent the generation of poets who have emerged since the mid-1990s.
Making for Planet Alice by
An anthology of the best of new British and Irish women poets of the '90s. This is a perfect introduction to some of the fresh new voices coming out of Britain and Ireland. These thirty women all published their first books in this decade.
Keep up to date with the work of the most recent award-winning poets, and look back on previous winners of these prizes.
We have a selection of recordings of poets reading their own works, on vinyl.
This collection is reference only and can't be borrowed, but we have a listening booth and record player available for you to use at the Old Library on the Streatham campus.
Just let us know if you'd like to arrange to listen to any of the recordings; email library@exeter.ac.uk or use Library chat to get in touch.
Click here to listen to some radio programmes discussing form in poetry. Click on Sign in and then search for University of Exeter
2021 BBC Radio 4 series On Form.
In this series, free verse poet Andrew McMillan meets a diverse group of contemporary British poets who are re-framing traditional techniques to write about the modern world, exploring why form is fashionable again.
2016 BBC Radio 3 programme The Verb: On Form
Ian McMillan looks at form with guests Claudia Rankine, Don Paterson and AL Kennedy.
You have access to hundreds of online books that cover creative writing and wider topics.
Use Library Search to search by topic to discover relevant content.
Some of the titles highlighted below may be of interest to you.
Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2018 by
This bestselling guide to all areas of publishing and the media is completely revised and updated every year. The Yearbook is packed with advice, inspiration and practical guidance on who to contact and how to get published. Foreword to the 2018 edition by David Lodge New articles in the 2018 edition on:- Writing popular history by Tom Holland- Editing and writing by Diana Athill- Ghostwriting by Gillian Stern- Writing Thrillers by Kimberley Chambers- The health and wellness market by Anita Bean- Self-publishing online by Harry Bingham- How to choose your agent by Jo Unwin- First Chapters by Emma Flint- Pitching your ideas by Mike Unwin- How to make a living by Alison Branagan All articles are reviewed and updated every year. Key articles on Copyright Law, Tax, Publishing Agreements, E-publishing, Publishing news and trends are fully updated every year. Plus over 4,000 listings entries on who to contact and how across the media and publishing worlds In short it is 'Full of useful stuff' - J.K. Rowling
Writers' and artists' guide to writing for children and YA by 
Children's Literature: a Very Short Introduction by
This Very Short Introduction provides a lively and comprehensive discussion of children's literature--what it is, why it is interesting, how it contributes to culture, and how it is studied as literature. Reynolds provides a general overview of the history of the subject as it has developed in English, at the same time introducing key debates, developments, and figures in the field. Reynolds demonstrates how writing for children--whether on page or screen--has helped in shaping ideas about culture, society and childhood. She also raises questions about the future of children's literature generally and discusses the shape that it might take.
Modern Children's Literature by
An established introductory textbook that provides students with a guide to developments in children's literature over time and across genres. This stimulating collection of critical essays written by a team of subject experts explores key British, American and Australian works, from picture books and texts for younger children, through to graphic novels and young adult fiction. It combines accessible close readings of children's texts with informed examinations of genres, issues and critical contexts, making it an essential practical book for students. This is an ideal core text for dedicated modules on Children's literature which may be offered at the upper levels of an undergraduate literature or education degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying children's literature for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in literature or education. New to this Edition: - Revised and updated throughout in light of recent children's books and the latest research - Includes new coverage of key topics such as canon formation, fantasy and technology - Features an essay on children's poetry by the former Children's Laureate, Michael Rosen
The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature by
Some of the most innovative and spell-binding literature has been written for young people, but only recently has academic study embraced its range and complexity. This Companion offers a state-of-the-subject survey of English-language children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present. With discussions ranging from eighteenth-century moral tales to modern fantasies by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, the Companion illuminates acknowledged classics and many more neglected works. Its unique structure means that equal consideration can be given to both texts and contexts. Some chapters analyse key themes and major genres, including humour, poetry, school stories, and picture books. Others explore the sociological dimensions of children's literature and the impact of publishing practices. Written by leading scholars from around the world, this Companion will be essential reading for all students and scholars of children's literature, offering original readings and new research that reflects the latest developments in the field.
The best way to find articles is to search by keyword using Library Search or a database. This method will searches across a large number of journals at one time, helping to ensure that you don't miss a useful piece of research/
However, you may want to view and keep up to date with a particular journal if it is key to your subject area.
The following journals relevant to Children's literature are available via Library Search.
We have access to many collections of online primary sources, covering a wide range of topic areas, historical periods and encompassing a variety of different types of digitised material.
You can see the full range on the Primary Sources guide.
The following collections of online primary sources would be of interest to those studying the history of children's literature.
