Naomi Alderman was born in 1974 and was brought up in the Orthodox Jewish Community in Hendon, where she now lives. She is a graduate from Oxford University where she studied for a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She won the David Higham Award while at UEA, and graduated from the Creative Writing MA in 2003. Her first novel Disobedience was published in 2006 and won the Orange Prize for New Writers in 2006 and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2007. The novel was also shortlisted for The Glen Dimplex Award (2006) and Naomi was selected as one of Waterstone's 25 Authors for the Future in 2007, when she also received a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. This interview was conducted in September 2007.
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Richard Beard is the author four novels - X20 (1996), Damascus (1998), The Cartoonist (2000) and Dry Bones (2004) - and three works of non-fiction - Muddied Oafs (2003), Manly Pursuits (2006) and most recently Becoming Drucilla (2008). After studying at Cambridge he worked in Hong Kong and at the Dragon School in Oxford as a games teacher before becoming a manservant to Mathilda, Duchess of Argyll. He also worked at the National Library in Paris. He graduated from the Creative Writing MA in 1995, and since graduation he has lived and worked in Somerset, Switzerland, France and Japan, where he was a visiting professor the University of Tokyo. He is currently the Director of the National Academy of Writing in Birmingham. This interview was conducted in May 2008.
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Aged 23, Georgie Codd graduated from the Creative Writing: Prose MA in September 2010, when she was the winner of that year's Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. She is currently working on her first novel: a fast-paced story of broken trust and camel-swapping, set in the desert and Dorchester. This essay won the 2010 Student Transitions Essay Competition, organised by UEA’s Dean of Students Office. The essay title given for the competition was: "What advice would you give to a new Masters student about to begin the postgraduate course you are studying?"
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Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He graduated from UEA's English Literature with Creative Writing BA in 2004 and subsequently achieved a distinction on the Creative Writing (Prose) MA in 2005, when he was awarded the Curtis Brown Award for the best MA dissertation. Submarine, published in February 2008 by Hamish Hamilton, is his first novel. It has been translated into many languages and is being developed for the cinema. In 2008 it was nominated for the Desmond Elliot Prize, and in 2009 for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and Wales Book of the Year. Joe is also a widely published poet and has performed at festivals including Hay-on-Wye and Latitude. This interview was conducted in February 2008.
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Adam Foulds read English at St Catherine's Oxford and graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA in 2000, after which he received the Harper-Wood fellowship from St John's College, Cambridge. He was awarded the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2008 for his first novel The Truth About These Strange Times, which previously won a Betty Trask Award in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. His verse novella The Broken Word was published by Cape in May 2008 and has since won the Costa Poetry Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. It was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His second novel The Quickening Maze was published in 2009 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This interview was conducted in June 2008.
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Nathan Hamilton is a poet, publisher, critic and blogger. He graduated from the UEA's English and American Literature BA with a first class honours in 2004 and completed the Creative writing (Poetry) MA with a distinction in 2005. While on the BA he wrote and edited for the student newspaper Concrete, for which he won two Guardian Student Media Award nominations. During his MA he edited a literary anthology called Wake to raise money for the charity Habitat for Humanity. He now runs Egg Box Publishing and is Chairman of the Board of Directors for Inpress, an organisation representing and supporting 40 independent UK publishers. He is also a freelance arts manager, with Writers' Centre Norwich, the BBC, UEA, and Creative Partnerships among his clients. His poetry and criticism have been published in a number of places, including Poetry London, The Manhattan Review, nth position, and The Spectator. He was a judge for the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This interview was conducted in July 2007.
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Jane Harris was born in Belfast and brought up in Glasgow. Her short stories have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and she has also written several award-winning short films. Her debut novel, The Observations, was published by Faber in 2006 and was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. In 2007, Jane was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year and the South Bank Show Times Breakthrough Award. She is currently at work on her second novel. She lives in London with her husband Tom. This interview was conducted in August 2007.
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Mark McNay was born in 1965 and brought up in a mining village in central Scotland. After a failed electrical engineering course and fifteen years doing odd jobs, Mark began a BA in English Literature at UEA in 1999. He gained first class honours and joined the Creative Writing MA, from which he graduated with a distinction in 2003. His first novel Fresh won the Arts Foundation New Fiction Award and the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award in 2007. His second novel Under Control was published in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Prize for Scottish Fiction. Mark currently lives in Norwich and teaches on the UEA undergraduate Creative Writing programme. This interview was conducted in June 2007.
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James Scudamore was born in 1976, and spent much of his childhood living abroad. After reading Modern Languages at Oxford he worked in advertising for four years, then took an MA in Creative Writing at UEA. His first novel, The Amnesia Clinic, won the 2007 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Glen Dimplex Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. His second novel Heliopolis was published in 2009 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. James was appointed as the Creative Writing Fellow at UEA for the autumn semester 2009. This interview was conducted in September 2007.
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Kathryn Simmonds graduated from the Creative Writing (Poetry) MA in 2002, and won an Eric Gregory Award that same year. She was awarded an Eastern Arts Bursary in 2003, and won the Poetry London competition in 2006. Her short story Pentecost was shortlisted for the 2007 Asham Award and her first radio play Poetry for Beginners was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2008. Kathryn's poems have appeared in Poetry London, PN Review, Exquisite Corpse and Boomerang. Her pamphlet of poems Snug was a winner in the Poetry Business competition in 2004 and subsequently published by Smith/Doorstop. Her first collection Sunday at the Skin Launderette was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and winner of the Forward Best First Collection Prize. It also won the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was nominated for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the Costa Poetry Award. This interview was conducted in February 2008.
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