The poet, Professor David Morley of the University of Warwick Writing Programme, has been elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

The Fellowship is one of the highest honours for a writer. It encompasses the most distinguished authors working in the English language, including J.K. Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Philip Pullman, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Richard Ford, Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard.

Founded in 1820, The Royal Society of Literature is Britain’s national charity for the advancement of literature. It acts as a voice for the value of literature, encouraging and honouring great writers, and engaging people in appreciating literature.

Election as Fellow of the RSL is a uniquely prestigious honour, awarded by writers to writers.

New Fellows are offered the choice of signing the Society’s Roll Book with the pen of T.S. Eliot, Lord Byron or – new this year - George Eliot. In keeping with the honour being for his poetry, Morley signed with Byron’s.

A National Teaching Fellow, Professor Morley teaches on Warwick’s Writing Programme, and is a recent winner of The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for his collection The Invisible Gift, and The Cholmondeley Award for achievement in poetry from The Society of Authors.

On receiving the RSL Fellowship, Professor Morley commented:

‘My election to The Royal Society came out of the blue. It’s a huge honour for my poetry to be recognised by other writers in this way. I’m aware I’ve got a lot of work to do, and Fellowship of the RSL is a great boost. The RSL has an excellent schools outreach programme which I’m looking forward to being involved with. I hope to encourage more students from diverse and less privileged backgrounds to study creative writing at university and become authors themselves’.

The University of Warwick is pleased to announce that the submission period for the 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation is now open.

Inaugurated in 2017, the prize is awarded to the best eligible work of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction, work of fiction for children or young adults, or graphic novel, written by a woman, translated into English by a female or male translator, and published by a UK or Irish publisher.

The £1,000 prize is divided between the writer and her translator(s), with each contributor receiving an equal share.

Submissions are open until Tuesday 26 June, 2018, with the prize set to be awarded at an evening event held at the Warwick Arts Centre on Tuesday 13 November, 2018.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation aims to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership.

The 2017 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation was awarded to Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by American translator Susan Bernofsky.

Commenting on the 2018 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Dr Chantal Wright, the prize’s coordinator and Associate Professor in the University of Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary studies said:

“The prize has already had tremendous effects in terms of awareness-raising around the issue of the under-representation of female authors in translation. We’re very much hoping for an increase this year on the 58 entries we received in 2017 and look forward to seeing which women authors have been made available in English by British and Irish publishers over the last twelve months.”

For full details of eligibility and how to enter, please go to: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/womenintranslation/

For further information, please contact Tom Frew in the university press office at A.T.Frew@warwick.ac.uk or Chantal Wright at womenintranslation@warwick.ac.uk.

Congratulations to the Warwick Research Collective (WReC) who have been nominated for the Research Contribution Award

For more information regarding this research team see here.

Good luck with the nomination!

Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by American translator Susan Bernofsky and published by Portobello Books, has been announced as the winner of the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_announces_the

Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by American translator Susan Bernofsky and published by Portobello Books, has been announced as the winner of the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_announces_the

Novelist Sarah Moss and literary translator Chantal Wright from the Warwick Writing Programme will lead a discussion on international women’s literature and the new Warwick Prize for Women in Translation on Wednesday 22 November, 7 - 8.15 p.m., at Warwick Books in Warwick town centre. You may want to read one or more of the six books shortlisted for this year’s prize and come along with your thoughts but you can also simply join us for the discussion – all welcome! Please e-mail translation@warwick.ac.uk to reserve your spot. Supported by the Connecting Cultures GRP, Warwick Books and Harper Collins Independent Thinking.

The competition received a total of 58 eligible entries of which 16 titles made the initial longlist. The shortlist comprises a novel, a novella, a children’s book, a collection of poetry and a volume of short stories. The source languages represented are Polish and German, with two shortlisted titles apiece, as well as Irish and Russian.

The full list of shortlisted titles is as follows: 

- Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from Russian by Bela Sheyavich (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016)

- Swallow Summer by Larissa Boehning, translated from German by Lyn Marven (Comma Press, 2016)

- Clementine Loves Red by Krystyna Boglar, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Zosia Krasodomska-Jones (Pushkin Children’s Books, 2016)

- The Coast Road by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated from Irish by Michael Coady, Peter Fallon, Tom French, Alan Gillis, Vona Groarke, John McAuliffe, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Michelle O’Sullivan, Justin Quinn, Billy Ramsell, Peter Sirr and David Wheatley (The Gallery Press, 2016)

- Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated from Polish by Eliza Marciniak (Portobello Books, 2017)

- Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by Susan Bernofsky (Portobello Books, 2016)

Click here for more information on the Prize for Women in Translation and Translation at Warwick.

The Times/Sunday Times’ Good University Guide 2018 rankings were published recently, and the department continues its strong performance in national and international league tables. For Creative Writing, the department's Warwick Writing Programme is ranked at number 1 in the UK. For English, we are 10th, and for Theatre Studies (categorised as Drama, Dance and Cinematics), 6th.

Other Warwick departments with joint degrees with English have also performed strongly, including modern languages (French, German, Italian, Iberian Studies), Classics, Philosophy, and History. For the full details, please see here.

The Times/Sunday Times’ Good University Guide 2018 has ranked 22 subjects at the University of Warwick in the UK’s top 10 for their field, with the Warwick Writing Programme ranked again 1^st for Creative Writing. For English we are placed at 10th. To see full details, including for those departments with which we have joint degrees (Theatre, Film, Philosophy, Modern Languages (French, German, Italian, Hispanic Studies), Classics, and History) please see the press release here.

She was awarded the prize for Adventures in Synthetic Fun, an essay exploring the concept of ‘synthetic fun’ coined in the 1960s by Jeremy Sandford, and the changing nature of fun in an era of increasing automation, disputed oppression, widespread affective labour, illusory meritocracy, costly social mobility, divisive politics, and a degraded imagination.

Katy studied on the BA English Literature and Creative Writing and the MA in Writing in the department.