NAWE Board of Trustees 2022 - 2025
A new Board of Trustees for 2022-2025 was appointed at the AGM on Thursday 10 November 2022. The trustees will serve from November 2022 to November 2025. One third of the board must retire at the end of each year but can be re-appointed.
Board of Trustees for 2022-2025
Anne Caldwell
Anne Caldwell is a poet, freelance writer and lecturer for the Open University. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Bolton. In the past, she worked for NAWE in various capacities including Programme Director, with a specialism in professional development for writers. She is co-editing a new prose poetry anthology for the UK: 'The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry' with Oz Hardwick, and her most recent book is 'Painting the Spiral Staircase', (Cinnamon). She has also had a career in literature development and libraries and is programming live events this year for the City of Salford. (Update: Anne stepped down in July 2024.)
Jonathan Davidson (Acting Co-Chair)
Jonathan Davidson has worked for over twenty-five years in arts management and literature development. He is Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands which runs a major programme of writing in education work with children and students.
Dr Sue Dymoke, Nottingham Trent University
Sue Dymoke is a poet, Associate Professor in Education at Nottingham Trent University and National Teaching Fellow/SFHEA. Her research focuses on aspects of poetry pedagogy and curriculum, writing development and creativity. Sue also regularly leads poetry writing workshops for young people and adults. A NAWE member for many years, she has extensive experience of peer reviewing, journal editing and writing for publication. Books include three poetry collections (the latest is What They Left Behind, Shoestring Press) and edited volumes: Making Poetry Matter: International research on poetry pedagogy and Making Poetry Happen: Transforming the poetry classroom (Bloomsbury). She blogs at suedymokepoetry.com. (Update: NAWE was deeply saddened to learn of Sue’s untimely death in 2023. Read a personal tribute from fellow NAWE member Francis Gilbert here. Sue also served on the NAWE HE Committee.)
Professor Andrew Melrose, University of Winchester/University of Brighton(chair)
Professor Andrew Melrose is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Winchester and works with other universities throughout the UK, Greece, Australia and the USA. He has worked in Creative Writing for over 25 years and has over 150 publications in one form or another (books, films, articles, poems and songs) and he has maintained his ambition to publish at least one thing every year. His most recent publications are The Boat and Das Boot (in German translation) the-immigration-boat-story.com/ which is about introducing children to the idea of people who take to boats looking for a better life, and Fisherrow - a book and cd of his own songs andymelrose.bandcamp.com/. At the moment he is working on a novel, has edited Writing in Practice and Meniscus and is also an international editor for Axon: Creative Explorations. (Update: Andrew stepped down from being chair in 2023. He has also stepped down from the HE Committee.)
Derek Neale (Acting Co-Chair)
Derek Neale is a novelist – The Book of Guardians (Salt, 2012) – script and short story writer, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University. He edited and co-wrote A Creative Writing Handbook: Developing dramatic technique, individual style and voice (A&C Black/Bloomsbury, 2009); co-authored Writing Fiction and Life Writing (both Routledge, 2009) and was a principle author in Creative Writing: a workbook with readings (Routledge, 2006). Derek is lead educator on the OU/FutureLearn Start Writing Fiction MOOC.
Heather Richardson
Heather Richardson recently retired as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University after 18 years where she worked in several roles, including Associate Lecturer and an academic-related post. Her work included module production, the line management of Associate Lecturers and PhD supervision. Prior to becoming an academic she spent fifteen years in healthcare sales and marketing, working for the Wellcome Foundation, Astra Pharmaceuticals and BMI Healthcare before joining a pharmaceutical distributor in Northern Ireland as Sales and Marketing Director. She lives in Belfast.
Lucy Sweetman
Lucy Sweetman is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her research is focused on memoir, the literary essay, and using creative writing to respond to and make sense of national and global political events. Lucy also researches and writes about teaching and learning in higher education. Her most recent publication is a co-edited volume on leadership in higher education. Before coming to Bath Spa University, Lucy spent more than twenty years working in the voluntary sector with vulnerable and marginalized young people.
Proposed Trustees
Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton (formerly a co-opted member)
I am the Academic Director of Creative Writing at Cambridge University Institute of Continuing Education. I have been in HE since 2009 and have taught in the US and the UK. As a writer, academic, and creative practitioner, I create and co-develop projects, platforms, and opportunities to empower people to share their stories. I create projects that encourage students to engage with readers and the wider community and aim to lead by example by participating in and creating community arts projects. Diversity, representation, narrative, and voice are important to me on the page, in the classroom, and in life.
Rab Ferguson
Rab Ferguson is a children’s author. His award-winning middle grade series The Late Crew is about young carers meeting aliens, and is used by carers charities and schools across the UK. He delivers workshops with young carers groups, as well school assemblies. He is an experience facilitator of creative writing, storytelling, theatre and visual arts workshops. He also works for the National Literacy Trust as the Publisher Relationships Manager (where he meets many lovely children’s authors and reads many amazing children’s books!). In addition, he is a Creative Writing Tutor at the Open College of the Arts, with a specialism in children’s writing. Previously he worked with The Reader, supporting partner organisations to set up reading groups across the North of England, and delivering his own reading groups in a prison and probation hostel.
Francis Gilbert
Ruth Moore
Ruth Moore is a fiction writer and poet based in Oxford. She is currently pursuing a funded PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter about 'time-playful' children's fiction and silenced histories. Her as-yet unpublished children's novel won the Bath Children's Novel Award in 2020 and her poetry and short fiction have won prizes or been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, the Historical Writers' Association, Bath Flash Fiction and the Crime Writers' Association. Prior to her PhD, Ruth managed a wide range of collaborations and projects in higher education, arts, and charities, including for the University of Oxford, the Children's Society and theatres. She is a PhD Rep on NAWE's Higher Education committee, volunteers in grassroots football, and co-organises an annual arts conference called Hutchmoot UK.
Jane Moss (formerly a co-opted member)
Jane is based in Cornwall where she hosts local community writing groups, co-hosts The Writing Retreat which provides in-person and online courses and residential retreats for writers. She has an interest in writing for wellbeing in health and social care contexts and especially in bereavement support. Her book Writing in Bereavement, A Creative Handbook, is published by Jessica Kingsley. Jane’s current work includes a study unit in creative journal writing for fourth year medical students at the Peninsular Medical School. Her doctorate, completed in 2024, has produced a model of practice for a 'community novel' based on participatory research with volunteers in a Cornish Parish. See www.janemoss.com for more information about Jane.
Jocelyn Page
Jocelyn Page, a poet from Connecticut, USA, living in London, has published in various journals including The Spectator, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg, South Carolina Review and Poetry Review. Her debut pamphlet, smithereens, was published in 2010 by tall lighthouse press and her 2016 You’ve Got to Wait Till the Man You Trust Says Go was the winner of the Goldsmiths’ Writer Centre’s inaugural Poetry Pamphlet award. She has held residencies at The Reach Climbing Centre in Woolwich and the 999 Club homeless centre. She convenes and teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, the University of London Worldwide and Verto Education, and is the Resident Creative Consultant for the ‘Just Poetry’ project at Greenpeace International.
Karina Lickorish Quinn
Heather Richardson (re-appointment - see above)
Lucy Sweetman (re-appointment - see biog above)
NB: The elected Board of Trustees may co-opt further members to fill any role which is vacant, provided co-options shall come to an end at the next AGM, when elections will again apply to any vacant positions.