Duke English is excited to welcome British poet, critic, short story writer and photographer Frances Leviston to our faculty as the 2024-25 Blackburn Visiting Artist-in-Residence. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, UK.
This Fall, Leviston will teach an English 110S "Introduction to Creative Writing" course on Thursday afternoons. She describes this creative writing course as one that will allow you to feel the differences between poetry, memoir, fiction, playwriting and will dive into the questions:
Prior creative writing experience is optional for this class.
On Tuesday afternoons this Fall she will teach English 220S.01 "Intro to the Writing of Poetry." Leviston’s description of this course states that it will encourage students to explore and rewire their relationship with words as poets, approaching language not as a tool to be used, but as a living intelligence with which to collaborate.
This summer, Trisha Santanam, a third-year English major and Duke English Ambassador was joined by Professor Leviston for a brief Zoom interview that introduces her to the Duke community.
Leviston's works includes her first collection of poetry, Public Dream, which was a candidate for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Award. Her second collection, Disinformation, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She has published poems in major publications, including the New Yorker, Poetry (Chicago), The Nation, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and Poetry Ireland Review. Leviston's first book of short stories, The Voice in My Ear, was published in March of 2020 and includes 'Broderie Anglaise' which made the shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award and was broadcast on BBC Radio. Her versatility allowed her to collaborate with composer Martin Suckling on a series of poems and compositions, including Black Fell, an interactive digital opera, and publish other scholarly works including reviews and essays on poetry that have appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, Twentieth-Century Literature, Edinburgh Review, and others. Her "Mothers and Marimbas in 'The Bight': Bishop's Danse Macabre" was awarded the Andrew J. Kappel Prize for Literary Criticism in 2015.
The William M. Blackburn Endowment sponsors the Blackburn Art-in Residence, which allows Duke English to bring in distinguished writers to teach courses in creative writing so that our students benefit from the teachings of authors with national or international reputations. Each Blackburn Artist-in-Residence is committed to engaging with the literary and intellectual life of the English department, which includes giving public readings and participating in workshops.
Duke English looks forward to all that Frances Leviston will bring to our community during the 2024-25 academic year.
English Department
