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The Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Science

Association for Creative Writing and Education (ACWE)

Our Writers

Dinesh Allirajah has been working as a writer and performance artist since 1988, both as an individual and in the 1990s was a founder member of Asian Voices, Asian Lives, a collective of British Asian writers and performers, which has been featured on radio and television and has acquired a national reputation. Dinesh has performed (performance poetry and short stories) and run workshops as part of our summer 2006 programme. His workshops can incorporate creative writing, performance, rhythm, poetry and storytelling and the expression of identity through writing. Dinesh is available for work in schools via The Windows Project.

Simon Armitage is a poet, a senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Writing School. Simon is usually busy with his GCSE tours and teaching commitments but has contributed to the ACWE outreach programme by reading at some of our events. For more information about Simon’s work and to find out where he performs with GCSE Poetry Live – see his website.

Sherry Ashworth is a novelist who writes both adult and teenage fiction and non-fiction. An English teacher since 1977, she has taught English in secondary schools, creative writing to adults in various settings and has recently joined MMU as Lecturer in Creative Writing (part-time). Sherry broadcasts freelance on Radio 4, abridges children’s books for the BBC and also writes features. Sherry has been writing for publication since 1989 and has been nominated for and won many awards. Sherry has done readings and led many successful creative writing workshops for ACWE. She also contributes to the MMU CPD (Continuing Professional Development) courses for teachers Teaching Creative Writing Workshop and Enabling New Writing Although she is busy with her MMU teaching and writing commitments, Sherry is still keen to continue to work in schools. Contact details and details of her publications can be found here

Rachel Broady has written for every national tabloid and the vast majority of women’s magazines in the UK and was a feature writer in Sydney, Australia. She has worked as a reporter, a feature writer, a news editor, a features editor, a travel writer, a sub-editor and a page designer. She has written a novel looking at life in a political commune in London’s East End set in the 1970s, currently being edited. She graduated with a BA in Journalism from University of Central Lancashire and an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. She also holds the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCE) qualification. More recently Rachel’s interests have taken her into education and she has held talks and workshops as part of the Association for Creative Writing and Education programme at Manchester Metropolitan University and with Aimhigher, a government initiative that aims to involve more young people aged 19-30 in higher education. She has also held workshops in schools and colleges for both students and teachers and recently worked with the DfeS on a national school project. She also gave a plenary lecture on the Art of Journalistic Writing at MMU, was editor and judge on the All Write! Writing Competition 2007 and gave a workshop on Slavery In Our Time as part of Manchester International Festival. She is a member of the National Association of Writers in Education and of the National Union of Journalists. Rachel is a judge on the All Write! competition panel and helps edit the anthology. She would like to see more creative journalism entries for the All Write! Competition and has provided some suggestions for anyone who’d like to try. Rachel can be contacted by email rachelbroady@yahoo.co.uk.

Melvin Burgess is the undisputed Godfather of Young Adult Fiction. His novel, Junk, the definitive tale of teenage heroin addiction, earned him the Guardian Prize and the coveted Carnegie Medal. More recently, his controversial novels, Lady: My Life as a Bitch and Doing It, have thrust him into the public eye. Doing It won the LA Times Book Award and was adapted for television in the US in a series starring Kelly Osborne. Much of his work has been adapted for stage and screen and has been widely translated. His most recent novel, Sara’s Face is his most ingenious and chilling yet. Inspired by the worlds first face transplant and the modern day obsession with plastic surgery, he has created a macabre thriller that marries magazine culture with echoes of Dr Frankenstein. Melvin has worked with us on a number of occasions doing readings and occasional workshops for older teens. He prefers to do readings. Further details about Melvin and how to get in touch with him can be found via his blog

Anne Caldwell has been running writing workshops for over fifteen years and has a flair for working with both young people and adults. Her poetry workshops are inspirational, inclusive and she excels in bringing out the best in young people who may not see themselves naturally as writers. She runs workshops, Inservice Training (INSET) and residencies in schools and is the training manager for NAWE and professional development manager for NALD. Anne contributes to MMU’s CPD courses Teaching Creative Writing and Enabling New Writing. She performs with a poetry group called ‘Six Women Poets with a Kick’ all over the country and her work has been described as ‘passionate and committed’. She will be featured in Red Ink magazine in 2008 and has been anthologised in Poet’s England, Cheshire, The Nerve, Virago Press and Only Connect Cinnamon Press (December 2008). As far as she knows, she is the only poet in the North West to win a chocolate shoe for her work! Anne can be booked by contacting her directly at a.caldwell@virgin.net
Mandy Coe, the October 2008 joint winner of the Manchester Poetry Prize, writes for adults and young people. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC radio and television and she has been published in the Radio Times and The Guardian. She was awarded a Hawthornden Castle fellowship in 2005. Details of other publications can be found on Mandy’s website. Mandy works with young people and adults. She undertakes workshops and residencies in schools and has worked with arts venues such as the Tate, the Barbican and the Royal festival Hall. She works closely with NAWE and The Poetry Society. She regularly delivers INSET (in service training) for teachers and contributes to MMU’s CPD (Continuing Professional Development) courses Teaching Creative Writing Workshop and Enabling New Writing for which her book Our Thoughts Are Bees co-written with poet, Jean Sprackland is a set text. Mandy’s work with both MMU and NAWE has involved leading inspirational workshops as well as performing her poetry to audiences of pupils and teachers at ACWE events. Mandy can be booked via her website

Professor Carol Ann Duffy is the Poet Laureate and Creative Director of the Writing School here at MMU. She is a celebrated poet whose many works are now a staple of the current literary curriculum in British schools. She has been said to be responsible for helping to make poetry popular again in the classroom. Carol Ann has worked as a panel member for the Society of Authors, as an Arts Council Awards judge and as the Vice-President of the Poetry Society. Her most recent work Rapture, which charts the course of a love affair, won the T.S. Eliot poetry award in 2006. Carol Ann, like Simon Armitage, has performed at ACWE events but is usually busy performing on the GCSE Poetry Live! Circuit. See Simon Armitage’s website for details of this programme.

Dreadlock Alien (a.k.a. Richard Grant) was Birmingham’s 10th Poet Laureate. His Work challenges concepts of a colour-divided society and reflects his own Anglo-Indian-Carribean heritage. His aim is to bring poetry to a new and younger audience by using the genres of slam, hip-hop and performance. Dreadlock Alien is the founder member of the New October Poets, the largest spoken word collective in the region and is also the director of the West Midlands Youth Poetry Slam Team. He has also produced and performed in a number of plays. Contact : dreadlockalienproductions@yahoo.co.uk

Zahid Hussein originates from a family of poets. His maternal grandfather and great-grandfather wrote poetry in Pushto and Urdu. He was born in Lancashire to a hard-working and traditional Pakistani family. His passion for literature was sparked by his mother. His first memory of her: lying comatose, head nestled in a pillow, reading Urdu Reader’s Digest. From an early age, he was fascinated by words, but preferred comics. On a nine month trip to Pakistan, he penned his adventures into his first diary. Then the timely intervention of a wiser soul guided him to ‘The Lord of The Rings’ and ‘Dune’ and his path was set. He attempted to write a nvel when he was 14 – he ran out of steam, but produced some great maps of a fantasy world! Millions of words later, he wrote ‘The Curry Mile’ – a bold viewpoint of Asian life, which has echoes in other diaspora communities. He teaches creative writing in schools and recently launched Manchester Muslim Writers, a collective of aspiring scribes from a diverse range of communities, both Muslim and non-Muslim.


Anjum Malik is a poet and scriptwriter as well as a Writing Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and Literary Associate at Kali Theatre, London. Her First Poetry collection ‘Before The Rains’ was published by Huddersfield University. She has also been published by Redbeck Press in ‘Spirit Of Bradford’, Crocus Press in ‘Peace Poems and Suitcase Press in ‘Hair’ and ‘The Suitcase Book Of Love Poems’. Anjum has written several original radio plays as well as two series of her original Woman’s Hour drama serial (THE INTERPRETER) for BBC Radio Drama. She has also written for television and is developing original screen and theatre plays. She has taken part in numerous writers’ residencies from the Lowry at Commonwealth Games, the Cheltenham Literature Festival to Strangeways Prison. Her stage credits include two stage monologues for the People’s History Museum in Manchester and she recently took part in a residency with the Birmingham Rep. Anjum is multi lingual and has extensive experience of working in education bodies such as schools, colleges and universities, as well as other literature and community based organisations, she can work with all ages and has a special interest in working with disadvantaged groups of all ages, backgrounds and cultures. Contact: anjummalik@hotmail.com

Jane McNulty is a television scriptwriter, boasting screen credits for episodes of various long-running series including EastEnders, Doctors, Crossroads, Heartbeat and Peak Practice. She has written for the theatre and won awards for her short stories and poetry. She currently teaches part-time at Liverpool John Moores University and mentors students on the MA in Scriptwriting at Salford University. She has over fifteen years experience of teaching creative writing to adults and children including by distance learning through her creation, The Writers’ Ark, a web-based co-operative of published and broadcast writer/tutors. She runs a ‘soap in two hours’ workshop for young people. Jane lives in Salford with her husband and teenage son

Livi Michael has published four award-winning novels for adults: Under a Thin Moon, which won the Arthur Welton award in 1992, Their Angel Reach, which won the Faber prize in 1995 and was short-listed for the Mind Award, and Inheritance, which won a Society of Authors award. Frank and the Black Hamster of Narkiz, her first novel for children, was short-listed for the 2003 Brandford Boase first novel award. Her subsequent title, The Whispering Road, won a Smarties Bronze Award and was chosen, in the US, by Borders for its Original Voices campaign. Her latest novel is The Angel Stone. Livi has also published two books for younger children with Orchard Books: 43 Bin Street and Seventeen Times As High As The Moon. Livi has worked in a range of schools, offering readings, talks and workshops for children aged 7 to 18, and their teachers. Livi has two sons and lives in Greater Manchester.

Nicholas Royle is a Manchester born and based novelist who has recently joined the MMU Writing School staff as a lecturer in creative writing. In addition to publishing five novels, Nick is also writer of short stories with over a hundred of them in print. His new short story collection, Mortality, was published in October 2006 and billed as a collection of skewed vignettes of the way we live now. He is also a regular contributor to the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, The Wire, Art Review, Literary Review, New Statesman, Times, and Zembla among others. He is currently in the process of adapting his 2000 novel Directors Cut for television. Nick ran a very enjoyable A-level vist-day workshop for us with older teens but usually works with adults teaching on the MMU MA Creative Writing.

Clare Shaw was born in 1972 in Burnley, the youngest of six children, and moved to Liverpool at the age of 18 to study politics. Her years in the city were marked by frequent admissions to psychiatric wards, which motivated her to become involved in working to improve mental health services. In her work, postgraduate study, publications and activism, she has become a recognised voice on women’s mental health issues, and. She lives in West Yorkshire, and works half-time as the co-director of a self-harm awareness mental health training partnership. She has given many readings, and was chosen one of the Arvon/Jerwood Young Writers of 2003-04. Her first collection Straight Ahead follows the trajectory of a life through childhood, breakdown and love, recording on the way the million sufferings and hopes of everyday life. She is available for workshops anywhere – with notice and subject to other commitments

Michael Symmons Roberts is a North West born and based poet and novelist who has recently joined the MMU Writing School staff as a lecturer in creative writing (poetry). Michael contributed to the Teaching Creative Writing Workshop CPD course for teachers this year and has co-written a resource The Write Kit, an innovative creative writing resource for KS3.

Julie Wilkinson, Oxford English graduate and trained actor, is author of many stage plays, original radio plays, series and adaptations, with experience in writing television drama. Julie has taught Creative Writing at Bolton Institute and Salford University and is currently a lecturer in Creative Writing here at MMU. She reads for North West Playwrights, and has worked as a dramaturg with a variety of playwrights’ organisations. Julie is course leader for the new 20-credit Script Writing & Performance course and also contributes to the Teaching Creative Writing Workshop course (these are available for teachers as part of our CPD programme). In her work with ACWE, Julie has run drama writing workshops in schools and on visit days here at MMU and has also performed at ACWE events, reading extracts from her own work.

Cliff Yates is a poet, freelance writer and workshop leader. His students at Maharishi School, where he taught English, were extraordinarily successful at winning creative writing competitions (Foyle Young Poets, Young Poets on the Underground, Norman Hidden prize etc). He wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence. His own poetry collections have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition, and an Arts Council England Writer’s Award. He has run courses and workshops for schools, colleges, the Poetry Society, the Arvon Foundation, AQA, NATE, NAGTY, the Poetry Business and the British Council. He holds a PhD in Poetry & Poetics, a Poetry Society ‘Teacher Trailblazer’ award, and he publishes and broadcasts extensively on creative writing. Cliff is available for workshops, residences and CPD