The Chichester Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
In collaboration with
About
An exciting forum for critical and creative writing practice
The Chichester Centre for Critical and Creative Writing (C4W) explores writing as an inclusive space of community, transformation, and justice.
All our researchers are deeply engaged with issues of equality, diversity and wider social concerns. The Centre’s members connect the literary, in all its forms, to real-world issues: re-imagining health, digital futures, climate crisis, sexuality, gender, and decolonisation.
The Centre is a shared space focused on our sense of place, both local and global, and the richly interconnected worlds created through processes of writing and inscription. This includes exploring poetry as a mode of ecological intervention; focusing on the role of women writers in shaping the literary landscape and national identity; using science fiction and speculative fiction as a resource to imagine a sustainable global future; and working creatively and critically with the rich folklore and cultural environment of the South Downs, Sussex, and the South Coast.
Researchers in the Centre engage with the complexity of literary experience and cultural literacy in the 21st century across a range of cultural forms, including the graphic novel, film, flash fiction and a diverse range of archives. The centre has two affiliate Centres: The Iris Murdoch Research Centre and The Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. We also work with a range of postgraduates and partners, including the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA), the South Downs Poetry Festival, Pallant House Gallery, the British Council, and the Anglo-Portuguese poetry festival Casa dos Poetas.
Contact us
If you are interested in studying with the Centre, or working with us as a partner organisation, please get in touch with Dr Suzanne Joinson at s.joinson@chi.ac.uk.
People
The Centre is run by and for a diverse range of staff and students at the University of Chichester, and its wider community.
Alongside its current academic lead, Dr Suzanne Joinson, postgraduate researchers Alessandro Pozzolo and Eleanor Piddington take a leading role in organising Centre events.
A full list of University staff associated with the Centre is given below.
Projects
Exploring how the written word is created, made possible, inherited and read
Impact
Events and News
Upcoming Events
Cutting-edge new writing from Chichester
Tuesday 17 June 2025 6.00-7:30 p.m.
The Mitre lecture theatre, University of Chichester, Bishop Otter Campus, PO19 6PE
Get ready for an evening filled with exciting new works from talented writers in Chichester! Join us at the Mitre Lecture Theatre, University of Chichester for a showcase of innovative storytelling and creative expression. Whether you’re a seasoned literary enthusiast or just looking for some fresh inspiration, this event is sure to ignite your imagination. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to experience the diverse voices shaping the future of writing in our community.
Reserve your free ticket at https://tinyurl.com/cuttingchi
Book Launch
Wednesday 25 June 2025 7.00-8:30 p.m.
Cloisters, University of Chichester, Bishop Otter Campus, PO19 6PE
Join Karen Stevens to celebrate the publication of her debut short story collection Brilliant Blue.
Welcome to the infamous Duncock Estate. Nestled on the South English coast, it is a place where identity matters; where people hold down jobs and do their best. Where taboos are broken and problems can’t be wished away. But even tragedy can be tinged with fragile hopes and humour.
"Bold, beautiful and ebullient" – Alison MacLeod
"Perfectly constructed, wonderfully written stories" - Suzanne Joinson
"Moving and powerful. This is such an important book." - Ed Hogan
Free event. No booking required. Car parking charge at flat rate (paybyphone.co.uk).
Past Events
The Department of Humanities Presents - Publishing Panel Event
Wednesday 7 May, 5.00 - 7.00pm
Room E124, University of Chichester, Bishop Otter Campus, PO19 6PE
Are you curious about how a book makes its way into print? To lift the veil on the often-mysterious world of publishing, the University of Chichester’s legendary Annual Publishing Panel Event returns.
The evening will consist of a panel discussion and a Q&A session, in which the audience will have the opportunity to ask any burning questions on getting published.
Here’s our exciting line-up for this year:
- Martin Goodman, founder and head Publisher of Barbican Press;
- Laura Williams, Literary Agent at Greene & Heaton Ltd;
- Sara Langham, Literary Agent at David Higham Associates;
- Salma Begum, Literary Agent at Greyhound Literary.
Chair: Karen Stevens, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing.
Any queries, please contact Karen at K.Stevens@chi.ac.uk
Free event. No booking required. Car parking charge at flat rate (paybyphone.co.uk).
Art, Poetry & Prose Tour
Thursday 6 March, 6.30 - 7.30pm at Pallant House Gallery
Connect with the works of Dora Carrington, Maggi Hambling and others through the beauty of spoken word. Join Creative Writing students from the University of Chichester for a tour of our current exhibitions.
As you are led through the Gallery, students will share their poetry and prose inspired by our art and the natural world.
Sign up at the front desk for tours, which run from 6.30-7.30pm, as part of our Late event on Thursday 6th March.
Entry is half price at £7 only, which enables full access to all exhibition spaces. Free entry for students.
BOOK LAUNCH - A fundraiser for equine therapy in Ukraine
5-6 pm Thurs Mar 13th | Cloisters, Bishop Otter Campus | Free
Chair: Dr Naomi Foyle. Book sales on the night will benefit the Sport-Elite charity activities.
Viacheslav Musiienko, a member of the Ukrainian Writers Union, is in Chichester to launch In Search of Hay for Horses and Lovers: A Diary in a Time of War, translated by Mykola Melenevskyi and Filipp Miroshnichenko for Waterloo Press (2025).
This contemporary war memoir shines a compassionate light on the experiences of people and animals during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including bombings, blackouts, and the evacuation of family members and horses.
Viacheslav Musiienko will present the book in conversation with Dr Daria Mattingly, Lecturer in Contemporary International History (European) at the University of Chichester, who will open the event with a short talk on the historical and political context of the memoir. Electricity in Kyiv permitting, literary scholar Dmytro Drozdovskyi PhD will join the conversation online.
Viacheslav will also talk about his and his wife Irene Musiienko’s work at the Sport-Elite equestrian club, which currently organises charitable day camps for the children of military personnel and evacuees from Mariupol. Horses belonging to the club also take part in hippotherapy programmes for injured soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Written with journalistic clarity, Musiienko’s book brings home the harsh realities of war, while also affirming the importance of humanistic and ecological values. Ultimately, this uplifting and heart-wrenching story is a testament to the enduring power of love.
– Dmytro Drozdovskyi, PhD, Managing Editor-in-Chief of Vsesvit Magazine
PROF. BEN NOYS - Book Launch
Wednesday 2 April 2025 | 5-7 p.m. | Cloisters, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester
What is the relationship between literature, life, and reality? On the occasion of the publication of his three books – The Matter of Language (2023), Crisis and Criticism (2004), and Envisioning the Good Life (2025) – Professor Benjamin Noys reflects on how we might re-envision life, literature, and reality as a collective transformation of the world.
Envisioning the Good Life: The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025) urges us to rediscover the vision of the good life in the collective and to grasp our own powers to transform our lives and the world.
Crisis and Criticism: Literary, Cultural and Political Essays, 2009–2021 (Leiden: Brill, 2024) is a series of interventions from 2009 to 2021 engaging with the literary, cultural and political responses to the capitalist crisis of 2007–8.
The Matter of Language: Abstraction & Poetry (London: Seagull Books, 2023) reconceives notions of alienation and class struggle as essential modes of reading and analysis for our fractured present.
Free and open to all.
Creative Writing and English: collaboration, connection, crossovers
7 March 2024
A roundtable discussion about crossover areas of interest and concern for the National Association of Writers in Education and EA.
Core discussion points:
Key implications of REF 28 for the disciplines of Creative Writing and English.
QAA Subject benchmarking – wider crossovers.
AOB, opportunities and ways of working together in the future.
Chair: Dr Suzanne Joinson, Reader in Creative Writing, convener of The Chichester Centre for Critical and Creative Writing, University of Chichester
A book launch with the Department of Humanities
20 March 2024, 4–5 p.m. Free and open to all
Academic Building 1.01, University of Chichester, Bishop Otter Campus, PO19 6PE
Andy Brown, co-author with Marc Woodward of Grace Notes And Other Poems (Sea Crow Press), is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Exeter University and known widely as a distinguished poet and writing tutor.
Here he will launch The Midnight Mechanic, a pacy, Dickensian foray into the sewers of Victorian London that explores a man’s relentless pursuit to better himself, to escape the muck and make amends, while raising pressing environmental issues that are still pertinent today.
Writing in Real Life
Friday 8 November 2024
A symposium celebrating writing that engages with real life, real people and the ups and downs of creating stories about the self.
Sessions 1-3 free, Session 4 £5 - reserve your ticket at https://tinyurl.com/writingirl
2.00 – 3.30 p.m. Session One (The Mitre)
Dr Tamarin Norwood, author of The Song of the Whole Wide World, will run a workshop on writing about birth, loss and bereavement. How does ‘Life Writing’ allow space to provide guidelines for individuals to navigate birth, birthing or death in scholarship or life? Open to both beginner and experienced writers.
4.00 – 4.50 p.m. Session Two (The Mitre)
Dr Suzanne Joinson, author of The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things, will be in conversation with her editor, Susie Nicklin from The Indigo Press. Suzy will talk about her experience writing the memoir and Susie will talk about the commissioning, editing and publishing experience of working with autobiographical materials.
5.00 – 5.50 p.m. Session Three (The Mitre)
Ennatu Domingo, author of Burnt Eucalyptus Wood and an MP in the Parliament of Catalonia, will be in conversation with Dr Daria Mattingly discussing Ennatu’s life writing and life story. Torn between forgetting and remembering, Ennatu explores the dilemma of international adoptees and migrant children and their quest for belonging in a book destined to be a classic of its genre.
7 p.m. Session Four (Show Room)
Join award-winning Irish singer, Cara Dillon, for this special event in which she’ll be discussing her debut book, Coming Home, a deeply personal narrative that offers readers a glimpse into the life and soul of one of Ireland’s brightest musical talents. Will include live performance and audience Q&A.
