billylinguist Creative Writing, English Language, English Literature, Linguistics

MLA Toronto 2026

In January 2026, two Northumbria colleagues, Billy Clark and Tony Williams will take part in a special session on ‘Producing and Evaluating Style’ at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Toronto

The session will explore ideas from Billy’s project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (MRF-2024-043), which will develop an account of the pragmatic processes involved in producing, interpreting and evaluating communicative acts, as well as how all of these processes interact

You can read more about the MLA session on the MLA Humanities Commons site here:

https://producingandevaluatingstyle.mla.hcommons.org

There will also soon be more information on the project page:

https://northumbriaenglish.org/producing-and-evaluating-style/

Here are the slides for Billy’s talk:

https://northumbriaenglish.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/billyclark-mla2026-pragmaticsandstyle.pptx

billylinguist Creative Writing, English Language and Literature, Events, history and culture

POSTPONED: The Sound of Shakespeare

We’re sorry to say that this event has had to be postponed. It will now take place on Thursday the 3rd of October. We will make more announcements nearer the time.

We are delighted to be hosting this year’s Babel lecture at Northumbria University on Thursday the 13th of June. The speaker is Ben Crystal, Ben is an actor, author, producer, an Associate Artist with the Shakespeare North Playhouse, and a consultant creative producer for Shakespeare companies around the world.

You can find out more and register here:

https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2024/06/public-lecture—annual-babel-lecture-2024/

billylinguist Creative Writing, English Language, English Language and Literature, English Literature

Where will my English degree take me?

Here is a collection of interviews with graduates from undergraduate English Language and Literature programmes discussing their current roles, how their undergraduate programmes relate to them, and how their work on English programmes helped contribute to their careers.

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/EeLevTG6pfEFuhll

Continue reading “Where will my English degree take me?” →
alice2gallagher Creative Writing, Uncategorized

Don’t Worry, Be Yappy. Beth’s Butcher’s Dog Magazine Internship.

You hear of societies and extracurriculars to boost your CV before you get to university, but I could never have contemplated something like this. This opportunity, pulsing in my email inbox, to intern for The Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine…

I’ve spent 10 weeks in the doghouse, and I never want to leave. Alongside Nadia, our other lovely BD intern from Northumbria Uni, we have had our hands on everything Butcher’s Dog from the tail up.

Continue reading “Don’t Worry, Be Yappy. Beth’s Butcher’s Dog Magazine Internship.” →
billylinguist Creative Writing, English, Uncategorized, writing, literature and cultural studies

Fiona Shaw: ‘Outwalkers’, ‘Tell It To The Bees’ and Yaddo

 

fionashaw

We are delighted that our colleague Fiona Shaw has been nominated for 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal for her novel Outwalkers  You can find the full list of nominations here

To add to this, Fiona has also been awarded a month’s residency at the prestigious Yaddo artists’ retreat, whose prior residents have included James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Katherine Anne Porter and Jeffrey Eugenides: https://www.yaddo.org/about/history/

tellittothebees

Meanwhile, the film version of Fiona’s novel Tell It To The Bees has been appearing at festivals, including at Cannes and the Toronto film festival

We are very happy about this well-deserved recognition of Fiona’s work