| Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Book cover image showing a phoenix rising from blood

New book, Storying the Menopause, out by OU Creative Writing researcher

22nd December 2025

Storying the Menopause: An Evocative Auto/ethnography by OU Creative Writing researcher, Dr Shanta Everington, is out now with Routledge. Focusing on often underrepresented experience inc: early menopause, LGBTQIA+, disability, the global majority & more!

3. A large room with a wooden-beamed high ceiling, lined with bookshelves and including several sofa, chairs and writing desks

OU Creative Writing joins forces to support working-class writers

18th November 2025

Creative Writing Department launches new handbook and sponsorship of Working-Class Writers’ Prize with online event featuring bestselling authors.

Colorful postcard reading 'Greetings from Chapel Hill' in large, bold letters. Each letter in 'Chapel Hill' features images of local landmarks from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The background is blue with white flowers, and the postcard rests on a surface with a green leaf pattern.

Letter writing is the inspiration for global OU literary event

27th October 2025

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our 3-day programme of presentations, creative readings and interviews, ‘Letters and Literature 1500-2025’, featuring researchers from the fields of literature and language, heritage industry experts and guest authors Karen McCarthy Woolf and Sigrid Nunez.

A portrait of a person in historical attire with the name 'Jane Austen' in large yellow script and the subtitle 'RISE OF A GENIUS' in smaller yellow capital letters, set against a dimly lit indoor background.

FASS academics advise on OU/BBC series Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius

6th October 2025

The BBC/OU docudrama, Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, made for the 250th birthday anniversary celebrations of the world-famous author, has pulled in 4.7 m viewers. Nicola J Watson and Emma Sweeney (ECW) served as nominated academics.

Image of a paperback hand held book being read

Can Books Heal? A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation podcast, with OU English academics

9th June 2025

OU English researchers Sara Haslam and Edmund King were heavily featured contributors in this podcast on 3000 years of the history of the healing book. Part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s programme of contemporary thought, CBC Ideas, ‘Do books have the power to heal us?’ took listeners back to Pharaoh Rameses II in its contextualised history of bibliotherapy - the inscription ‘healing place of the soul’ was placed above the portal of Rameses’ library. Edmund King brought the story up to date before conversation moved to a focused account of what Sara Haslam has termed ‘literary caregiving’ during the First World War.