Warwick Thursdays
The Writing Programme’s weekly literary salon, featuring novelists, poets, dramatists, filmmakers, publishers, editors, agents and artists. We meet in the Writers’ Room, Millburn House, University of Warwick.
To join the mailing list, please contact . The list below is correct as of 3 October 2016. Any revisions to the schedule will be on the website -
Autumn Term, 2016-17
Week 1: Thursday October 6th - CA Conrad
C A Conrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He is the author of 9 books of poetry and essays. The latest, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books) is the winner of the 2015 Believer Magazine Book Award. He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, and Ucross. For his books and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2016), please visit
Week 2: Thursday October 13th -Preti Taneja
Preti Taneja is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Warwick University, working in the department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and the Centre for Human Rights in Practice. She has previously been research fellow in global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker 2014. She writes about human rights, contemporary India, literature and culture and is the editor of Visual Verse, an online anthology of art and words. Her first novel, We That Are Young, will be published in 2017 by Galley Beggar Press.
Week 3: Thursday October 20th -Jonathan Skinner
Jonathan Skinner is a poet. His interests include Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies; Ethnopoetics; Sound Studies; Critical Theory; and Translation. He is founder and editor of ecopoetics, a journal which features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology.
Week 4: Thursday October 27th - Carlos Gamerro
Carlos Gamerro was born in Buenos Aires in 1962. He graduated in Arts from the University of Buenos Aires, where he served as a professor until 2002. He is a novelist, critic, and translator. In 2007 was Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge and in 2008 participated the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. in 2011 it premiered at the Teatro Alvear in Buenos Aires his play the Islands, directed by Alejandro Tantanian. He was co-author of the catalog of the 11th International Biennial of Lyon (2011). In 2012 he participated in the International Congress of Writers of Edinburgh. His novels have been translated into German, French, English and Turkish.
Week 5: Thursday November 3rd - Paul Cooper
Paul graduated from the University of Warwick in 2011 and spent most of the next year living in Sri Lanka, teaching English in schools and travelling the country, spending time among the ruins both ancient and modern. He also worked in Atlantis, a volunteer bookshop in Santorini, but came home to study on the creative writing MA at the UEA. He rode out the financial crisis there, doing internships and placements at literary magazines, also working as an archivist and freelance book reviewer. His novel, River of Ink, was published by Bloomsbury in 2015.
Week 6: Thursday November 10th - Tim Leach
Tim Leach is a novelist, specialising in historical fiction. His first novel, The Last King of Lydia, was published in 2013 and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize that year. A sequel, The King and the Slave was published in 2014. He is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, where he now teaches as an Assistant Professor.
Week 7: Thursday November 17th - David Vann
David is a novelist. His work has been translated into many languages. A former Guggenheim fellow, National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Wallace Stegner fellow, and John L’Heureux fellow, he holds degrees from Stanford and Cornell and is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick, and Honorary Professor at the University of Franche-Comté in France.
Week 8: Thursday November 24th - Claire Jane Carter
Claire Jane Carter is a a graduate of the MA programme at the University of East Anglia, and she is poet, essayist, and filmmaker. Her most recent film collaboration, Operation Moffat, has won numerous prizes at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival, Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival, and Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. She now lives in Sheffield.
Week 9: Thursday December 1st - Nikesh Shukla
Nikesh Shukla’s debut novel, Coconut Unlimited,was published by Quartet Books and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011.In 2013 he released a novella about food with Galley Beggars Press, The Time Machine, donating his royalties to Rot Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. The book won Best Novella at the Sabotage Awards. His second novel, Meatspace,was published by The Friday Project. It's been lauded by the New Statesman, BBC Radio 4, the Independent on Sunday, and the Daily Mail. Most recently, Nikesh is the editor of the essay collection, The Good Immigrant,where 21 British writers of colour discuss race and immigration in the UK.
Week 10: Thursday December 8th - Irenosen Okojie
Irenosen Okojie is a writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel, Butterfly Fish, won a Betty Trask award. Her work has been featured in The Observer,The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally. She was presented at the London Short Story Festival by Ben Okri as a dynamic writing talent to watch and was featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London’s exciting new authors. Her short story collection, Speak Gigantular, is published by Jacaranda Books.Twitter: @IrenosenOkojie