MARK LINDSEY
“I have always been a writer in some form or another, having intitially worked as a journalist, before switching to teaching English. Growing increasingly frustrated with a lack of creativity in the work I was doing and with less and less free time to write on my own, I decided to make a big change and returned to the University of Sheffield to study the MA Creative Writing. It was a very good move.
“I have been referred to as the most optimisitic chronic depressive in the country and in some ways that’s echoed in my work which takes a playful approach to serious subject matter. I feel that the melding of the absurd and the terrible feels somehow reflective of life. A good example of this would be the life of the paper bailer in Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude, which I would recommend to anyone. We can, if we look, find humour in many of the most desperate situations - just look at British politics at any moment in the last ten years.”
Desert island read: For prose, maybe High Rise, Concrete Island or Crash by J.G. Ballard. I also really love Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood and Adolfo Bioy Casares. For poetry it would have to be something by Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine or W.G. Sebald.
ETHEL MAQEDA
“I grew up at a time before TV was a big thing. I watched TV for the first time through the mesh fence and window of a beer hall. Our evenings were spent sitting around a brazier eating maputi and roasted peanuts and telling and retelling each other stories. I’m from a family of nine, and we also always had cousins and other relatives staying. We would sit late into the night, sometimes into the morning. Some stories, like my grandmother’s version of the folklore about how the crow lost his dinner to the jackal, we heard many times over. I first encountered Ian Fleming around the fire from my brothers, who were allowed to go and watch films that the mobile film unit would project onto the sidewall of the school building, telling us the younger ones about James Bond and trying to re-enact some of the scenes; this was way before I had ever set eyes on a TV. Around the same time, an uncle bought us a beautifully illustrated copy of The Arabian Nights. We read these stories and retold each other our versions. My father still makes the fire every evening, and when I was last home in 2016, we, now including my children and my husband, sat around the fire telling them about how we used to sit around the fire telling each other stories. That is where I first learnt to tell stories.
“I’ve always loved reading and would read whatever my older siblings brought home from their boarding schools. I must have read all the Pacesetter Novels before I turned 12. They were inappropriate for my age, but my parents were happy I was reading something. I started writing when I moved to the UK in 2005. Writing helps me concretise my experiences in a way that makes me feel connected to Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, Africa and to my friends and family in the diaspora. I’m still finding my voice and enjoying the short story form.”
Desert Island read: For prose, definitely, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, Purple Hibiscus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
For poetry, Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry or Okot p’Bitek Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. I could also just listen to the spoken word poem ‘Have you ever seen an African Dance’ by Jason Nkwain on a loop.
A J MOORE
“After many years writing other peoples’ words for a living and prevaricating about writing my own, I joined the MA course at the University of Sheffield in 2018. Going back to education after so long was pretty nerve-wracking, but for me having that time and space to focus on my writing was what I needed. Most importantly, it helped me realise that I could continue to say what I wanted to say but gave me the confidence to try new ways of saying it. I also met some amazing people, including the lovely bunch that became Cut Collective! I’m now back doing a PhD in Creative Writing at TUoS – as a proud Sheffielder born and bred, it’s great to be able to do this in my home city.
“I’m interested in creating ‘archives of the everyday’ in my work, particularly how personal and domestic objects can have political significance and be used to address the absences and silences inherent in official bureaucratic documents. So you’ll often find me researching bread packaging from the 1970s or scouring Pinterest for text from vintage mail order catalogues!”
Desert island read: Latanoprost Variations by Jeff Hilson.
AMBER V WHITHAM
“Ever since I was young, I struggled with expressing myself; always feeling alien to those around me, and especially myself. I had some interest in writing but always had a propensity for reading – and found a lot of comfort in it. When I began experimenting with writing during my teenage years, the work that came forth was raw, and in all honesty, needed some work. Despite this appreciation, I didn’t pick writing back up until my BA in English Literature and MA in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield years later.
It took a lot to curb my trepidation over my writing, and culture this rawness into something that was not only palatable but something I wanted to share with other people for the first time in my life. I wanted to express the beauty in depravity, the solitude in togetherness, the perturbed with the normal, and unite these polarising antitheses to express this fractured identity that I and so many others carry with us. Feeling seen and understood is something we all yearn for in life and something I have always wished for. Writing has allowed me to meet and connect with incredible creatives, and I feel closer and more connected to my fellow peers than ever.”
Desert island read:
Prose: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, Under The Skin by Michel Faber, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
Poetry: Anything by T.S. Eliot, Alice Oswald’s Falling Awake, Lisa Robertson’s The Weather.