Creative Writing academics achieve novel success

Professor Abi Curtis and Dr Naomi Booth - who have both won awards for previous work - published their books, both dystopian novels, at the end of last year.

Water & Glass, by Professor Curtis, explores the impact of environmental disaster on the world. Set in a future where world-wide flooding has had a catastrophic impact it examines the sacrifices humans will make in the face of ecological chaos and the lengths they will go to survive.

Professor Curtis was interviewed by Mariella Frostrup about dystopian fiction on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book on 31 December.

While Sealed, by Dr Booth, is a gripping modern fable on motherhood and a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother’s fight to survive.

Dr Booth’s Sealed was featured in the Guardian’s ‘best recent science fiction’ roundup in December 2017.

Abi Curtis is Professor of Creative Writing at York St John University and an award-winning poet. In 2004 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors and won the Crashaw Poetry Prize in 2008. Professor Curtis won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2013 for her second poetry collection The Glass Delusion. Water & Glass is published by Cloud Lodge Books.

Dr Naomi Booth lectures in Creative Writing and Literature at York St John University. Her previous book, The Lost Art of Sinking, won the Saboteur Award for Best Novella, was shortlisted for the MMU Novella Award and was selected for New Writing North’s Read Regional campaign. Sealed is published by Dead Ink Books.