About Us
2005-2018: Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Cardiff University (BA, MA and PhD supervisor)
BA, MA and MPhil External Examiner; also a member of validation panels for
the creation of Novel Writing MAs
2017: NAWE Editor, Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research,
2016: Writing residency at Jyvaskyla University, Finland
NAWE Peer Reviewer, Writing in Practice: the Journal of Creative Writing Research
Member of European Association of Creative Writing Programmes
2014-2016: Expert Consultant to HEA: part of the group shaping and editing the
HEA Benchmark in Creative Writing
Shelagh Weeks
Dr Shelagh Weeks has been a writer, teacher and collaborative editor for thirty years, working in schools, colleges, community settings, extensively in Higher Education and at national and international level with the Creative Writing umbrella organisations, NAWE and EACWP. She has given readings and run workshops at festivals in the UK and abroad. Shelagh has worked as a critical reader and assessor of short stories for the BBC. She has written critically on the short story, won the Cinnamon Short Story competition in 2008 and has published a collection of short stories (Washing the Dead) and a novel (Up Close). She is currently working on poetry, a novel and a collection of stories.
At Cardiff University Shelagh taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level, overseeing writing projects from inception to completion. Her emphasis is on supporting both experienced and emergent writers, helping to develop fresh and energised work, enhancing technique and linguistic awareness, building tighter plot structures and creating effective narrative voices. In guiding students to read widely and critically, to be self-reflective and analytical, and also helping them to tap into imaginative and autobiographical impulses, she frees up and makes more assured and individual the text and writer.
Susmita Bhattacharya
Susmita has been a professional writer and teacher since 2005. She teaches Contemporary Fiction on the Masters Programme at Winchester University, facilitates writing for young people at the Mayflower Young Writers workshops (the SO:Write project), and is a mentor supporting BAME writers for the Middle Way Mentoring project (led by Farhana Shaikh). She also leads workshops at festivals, guest lectures at universities, facilities workshops internationally (British Council in India, IIT Kharagpur, India) and has judged many short story competitions.
Susmita won the Winchester Writers’ Festival Memoir Prize in 2016 and her novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian/Bee Books) was longlisted for the Words to Screen Prize at the Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) festival in India. She has been shortlisted for, and won, numerous prizes and awards and her work has been commissioned by magazines and for BBC Radio 4. Her most recent collection of short stories, Table Manners, was published by Dahlia Books (2018). It won the Saboteur Short Story Collection Prize in 2019, was finalist for the DLF Hall & Woodhouse Literary Prize and serialised for BBC Radio 4 Extra (January 2020).
Susmita is committed to engaging with new and emergent writers: she supervises dissertations for post-graduate students, champions BAME writers and those exploring diversity and is excited to work with young voices, helping them to explore creative possibilities and the writing process. As a teacher and editor, Susmita encourages reading widely, and, in particular shows how literature can help develop strategies to maintain pace and stamina in longer pieces of work. Currently writing her second novel, she is very much engaged as a writing practitioner as well as an editor/teacher.
2020 - Table Manners serialised on BBC Radio 4
2019 - Finalist at Hall & Woodhouse DLF Prize
2019 – Table Manners (Dahlia Books) : Winner of Best Short Story Collection, Saboteur Awards
2018-current – Mentor on Middle Way Mentoring Project for emerging BAME writers
2018 – Creative Writing guest lecturer, Arts University Bournemouth
2017- Current – Mayflower Young Writers facilitator
2016-2019 – Winchester Writers’ Festival Speaker
2016 – Current: Lecturer and Module Leader for Contemporary Fiction, Winchester University (MA)
2016 - Winner, Winchester Writers’ Festival Memoir Prize
2015 – Published novel – The Normal State of Mind (Parthian)
2005 to date: Editor/Publisher, Honno Press
1999-2008: Publisher, Centre for Alternative Technology Publications
1999-2015: Editor-at-Large, Orion Books
1995-1999: Editorial Director, Orion Books
2016: PGCE PcET, UWTSD
2012: MA Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing, Cardiff University
Caroline Oakley
Caroline has worked for Grafton Books, W H Allen, Headline and Orion Books, the Centre for Alternative Technology and Honno, the Welsh Women’s Press. Authors she has worked with include Ian Rankin, Michael Moorcock, Cynan Jones, Tahir Shah, Tricia Sullivan, Lindsay Ashford and Crystal Jeans. Titles she has edited include winners of the CWA Gold Dagger, the Arthur C Clarke Award and Wales Book of the Year awards.
She is known for her structural editing, and for working with narrative non-fiction, crime and thrillers, SF and fantasy as well as general commercial fiction. Her own published writing includes a co-written guide to saving the planet, poetry, short fiction and articles for magazines.
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