Creating Worlds, Real and Imagined

Ever wanted to know the strategies prose writers use to explore place and their relationship with the environment, both real and imagined? The Creating Worlds, Real and Imagined Symposium in London this month offers the opportunity to find out.

This one day event, on the 28^th of May, is being hosted by the Contemporary Cultures of Writing Research Group which is based in the English and Creative Writing department at the OU. Several high-profile writers will be discussing their work, including Cal Flynn, winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2022, the UK and Ireland's most influential prize for young writers, and the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters; Priscilla Morris, whose novel Black Butterflies  was a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2024; Freya Berry, author of The Dictator’s Wife and The Birdcage Library; and Angela Hui whose debut book Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter was BBC Radio 4's book of the week and The Guardian, and Waterstones book of the year.

Also taking part will be writers who work as OU academics, such as Jennie Owen, Joanne Reardon, Lania Knight, Ed Hogan, Emily Bullock, Samuel Sargeant, and theorists including Nicola Watson, and Philip Seargeant.  

This all-day symposium tales place at Senate House, University of London in Bloomsbury.

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