Diploma in Creative Writing tutor profiles
Our two-year, part-time Diploma in Creative Writing allows you to strengthen your ability in four major areas of literary activity — prose, poetry, drama and analytical reading — as well as the chance to specialise in the genre of your choice.
A list of potential tutors can be found below. For more information about the course please visit the Diploma course page.
Course Director
J.D. Ballam
John Ballam is the author of two collections of poems, six stage plays, four screenplays, two novels and numerous reviews, articles and academic works. His best-known title is his memoir The Road to Harmony (1999; newest edn. 2013). He has been a script consultant/screenwriter for several major film producers in Hollywood, London and Mumbai. His latest work is a novel entitled The Mary House, published in NYC in 2019.
Potential tutors
Aleksandra Andrejevic
Aleksandra (Senja) Andrejevic is a Senior Lecturer in Dramatic Writing at the University of Gloucestershire. Her short prose has been published in The Lampeter Review, The Wrong Quarterly, Scrutiny Journal, The Dawntreader, Literary Mama, Brain, Child, Storgy and other magazines. In 2019, Aleksandra was awarded funding by Arts Council England, through their National Lottery Project Grant, for her play HALF. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing with University of Gloucestershire, where she's currently in the final stages of her PhD. She has recently completed her first novel and is represented by Llorella Belli Literary Agency in London.
Tes Asfaw
Tes Asfaw is a screenwriter and story consultant. He has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. He lectures in creative writing as well as literary analysis with a writerly eye for drama and prose. Currently, Tes has projects in development with Mammoth Screen, Escape Plan, and Two and Two. He has had short stories and poems published. Outside of Higher Education, Tes teaches creative writing for the Villiers Park Educational Trust, a national social justice charity for underrepresented young people aged 14-19. He spent years working as a literacy project worker for homeless and vulnerable people in Oxford.
Lucy Ayrton
Lucy Ayrton has an MA in Creative Writing from Warwick University, and is a novelist and performance poet. Her debut novel, One More Chance, the story of a young mother battling imprisonment and addiction, was published in 2018 with Dialogue Books and was a finalist in the Exeter Novel Award. Her next novel, Things We Lose in Waves, will be published in November 2023. She wrote and performed two full-length spoken word shows at the Edinburgh Festival, which were respectively turned into a poetry pamphlet and a radio play. She also competed as a national finalist at the UK Poetry Slam. Lucy has taught creative writing at all levels up to undergraduate for more than ten years.
Edward Clarke
Edward Clarke’s latest collection of poems is called Cherubims (Kelsay Books, 2022). A Book of Psalms was published by Paraclete Press in 2020. ‘Clarke’s Psalter,’ the documentary he presented about writing these poems in conversation with the Psalms, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2018. A selection of his poems, called The Voice inside Our Home, was published at the beginning of 2022 by SLG Press. He is also the author of two books of criticism, The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry (Iff Books, 2014). His teaching experience began almost twenty years ago at Trinity College, Dublin. Now he teaches creative writing and English literature to undergraduates and mature students at various colleges and in the Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University. He is also poetry editor of the magazine Cassandra Voices.
Victoria Condie
Victoria Condie has taught for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education since 2000 on its award-bearing courses, public programmes and summer schools. As a medievalist by training, whose doctoral thesis looked at the way language is used in certain Old English prose sermons and verse, she is particularly aware of how writers craft language to their own persuasive ends. Currently, she is a Bye-fellow of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge where she teaches English Literature and its Contexts 1300-1550 and Practical Criticism and Critical Practice for the Cambridge English Tripos. Her areas of research concentrate on the way writers use language, especially in prose. Her current work investigates the rhythms and cadences of Old English as it is used to achieve a specific effect; in this instance, an exploration of the deliberate contrast in prose effected by Kenneth Grahame in the non-narrative chapters of The Wind in the Willows.
Claire Crowther
Claire Crowther has an MPhil in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of South Wales and a PhD in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Kingston University. She has published five pamphlets and five collections of poetry from Shearsman Press. The first, Stretch of Closures, was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Best First Collection. Her fourth collection, Solar Cruise, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2020. Her current collection, A Pair of Three, was launched in October 2022. Her poems and reviews have appeared in such journals as London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, PN Review, London Magazine, Poetry London and many others. She has been Poet in Residence at the Royal Mint and the Dora Gordine Gallery and has done readings and talks at numerous festivals, conferences and reading series including Stanza, Lancaster, Ledbury and Aldeburgh. She has taught at the Poetry School and many community venues. She is Deputy /Reviews Editor of Long Poem Magazine. Her work is included in the Poetry Archive. Her New and Selected Poems and Sense and Nonsense, a collection of her prose, are due for publication in late 2024.
Frank Egerton
Frank Egerton has an MA in English (Keble College, Oxford) and has reviewed fiction for The Times, TLS and The Financial Times. He is interested in both the close examination of fiction and how technologies such as ebooks and print-on-demand have changed the publishing industry, offering fresh opportunities to writers. He is a member of the Society of Authors and AWP and is a former editor of the Oxford Writer. He was chair of Writers in Oxford from 2008 to 2010. His first novel The Lock was published in paperback in 2003, the ebook version having been an Independent e-Book Awards finalist in Santa Barbara in 2002. His second novel Invisible was published in 2010. In 2016 he was co-investigator on a digital project looking at narrative shapes and has recently completed a memoir entitled Trust: A family story. He is a member of Common Room at Kellogg College.
Angela France
Angela France has had poems published in many leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times. Her publications include Occupation (Ragged Raven Press, 2009), Lessons in Mallemaroking (Nine Arches Press, 2011), Hide (Nine Arches Press 2013) and The Hill (Nine Arches Press, 2017). The Hill has been developed into a live multi-media poetry show which Angela has been touring, funded by Arts Council England. Her latest collection, Terminarchy, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2021 and launched at Ledbury Poetry Festival. She has an M.A. in Creative and Critical Writing and a PhD from the University of Gloucestershire. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in various community settings.
Jeremy Hughes
Jeremy Hughes began his writing life with poetry. He was awarded first prize in the Poetry Wales Competition and shortlisted for an Eric Gregory Award. He has published two pamphlets – breathing for all my birds, highlighted at the Aldburgh Poetry Festival, and The Woman Opposite. He has published two novels – Wingspan (2013) and Dovetail (2011). He has been the recipient of a Literature of Wales Writer’s Bursary. His short fiction and life writing have been widely published, and he has reviewed fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction for such publications as TLS, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Acumen, and Oranges & Sardines. He was in the first cohort to study for the Master’s in Creative Writing at Oxford. He is a member of the Society of Authors.
Michael Johnstone
Mike Johnstone is an established novelist and a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire. Writing as D.D. Johnston, he’s the author of four novels, and his short fiction has been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize. He’s been described as “Bringing light to a dark world” (The Financial Times) and “one of the country’s most important left-wing fiction writers” (The Morning Star). Published in July 2022, his fourth novel, Disnaeland, has been called “gripping, funny, and hopeful” (The Times) and “wildly imaginative” (Scotland on Sunday).
Helen Jukes
Helen Jukes has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Port Magazine, Aeon and others. Her first book, A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings, was listed as a Book of the Year by Slate magazine and Glamour UK, Book of the Month by BBC Countryfile, and Book of the Week at the London Review of Books. It was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag non-fiction award. As a tutor, Helen has led courses for the National Writing Centre of Wales, the Wordsworth Trust, Writing East Midlands, Freedom from Torture, Crisis UK, and HM Prison Service. Her next book, Mother, Animal, is due out in February 2025 with Elliott & Thompson.
Shaun McCarthy
Shaun McCarthy is a professional stage and radio dramatist. He has had 13 stage plays professionally produced (e.g. Bristol Old Vic; Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath; Bike Shed Theatre; and by touring companies to Tobacco Factory Bristol, Theatre 503 London, Old Fire Station Oxford, etc.) and single dramas and drama series on BBC R4. He teaches a wide range of creative writing courses for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and guest lectures at universities in Europe. He runs Hooligan Theatre Productions with associate artists to develop his new plays for stage: they are currently developing projects in Bristol (UK) and Gesualdo (Italy). He is currently script developer / editor for TV drama projects with partners in The Netherlands and Paris.
Angus McFadzean
Angus McFadzean is a lecturer specialising in British and American Literature and Film. He is the Program Director of the Oxford University Summer School for Adults and teaches on international programmes for the Continuing Education Department. He is the author of Suburban Fantastic Cinema: Growing Up in the Late Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 2019) and the editor of James Joyce’s Epiphanies: A Critical Edition, forthcoming from University of Florida Press (2023). He holds a doctorate from Wadham College, Oxford on James Joyce and the Aesthetics of Transgression. He has published on James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and Hollywood cinema and has taught widely on literature of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, specifically modernism and the works of Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and WB Yeats.
Nicholas McInerny
Nicholas McInerny is an award-winning writer and producer in Radio, TV, Film and Stage with over 85 professional credits. Recent work includes four series of How to have a Perfect Marriage and an adaptation of Colette (BBC R4), a new play Common People (Omnibus, 2023), two series of award-winning podcast, Rainbow Dads – Stories of Gay and Bisexual Dads, as well as producing the podcast, Can We Write about This? Men, Sex and Feelings. He wrote 30 episodes of The Bill. Nicholas has taught in over 35 universities, and is the Chair of the Audio Committee, WGGB.
Elisabeth McKetta
Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is a novelist, poet, memoirist, biographer, teacher, and a mother of two. With a PhD on the intersections between fairy tales and autobiography, as well as a seven-year streak of writing weekly poems for strangers, she teaches writing for Harvard Extension School and Oxford Department for Continuing Education. She has authored thirteen books, most recently Edit Your Life (Penguin Random House 2023), Ark (Paul Dry Books 2023), and Awake with Asashoryu (Paul Dry Books 2022). Elisabeth lives with her sea-swimmer husband and her two young children, dividing their time between Boise and Cornwall. (elisabethsharpmcketta.com)
Daisy McNally
Daisy McNally has a PhD from Bath Spa University in Creative Writing, and a degree in English Literature from Durham University. She teaches on a variety of Creative Writing courses for Oxford’s Department of Continuing Education, including running regular weekly courses on writing fiction as well as summer schools, and on the Undergraduate Diploma programme. She is especially interested in women’s and psychological fiction. Daisy is the author of I See Through You published by Orion in 2018 and is currently writing another novel.
Jessica Moriarty
Jess Moriarty has been a Principal Lecturer in Creative Writing for almost ten years and is currently Course Leader for the Creative Writing MA at the University of Brighton. She is an experienced researcher and editor for the book series, Performance and Communities for Intellect Books. She has published extensively on creative writing pedagogy, autoethnography and community engagement. Her last book – Walking for Creative Recovery – explored life writing and walking as a method for supporting well-being and her new book – Creative Conversations – uses a combination of life writing and interviews to offer strategies for motivating the creative processes. Her pedagogic approach has a focus on diversity, personal story-telling and writing for change. Jess is the co-director of the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing Centre for Arts and Wellbeing (brighton.ac.uk) and on the board of directors for Lapidus. International. In 2022, Jess became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing
For aspiring writers, the Diploma offers involvement in a wide range of literary projects over two years of focused part-time study. Two study options are available including an online option with a summer school in Oxford.