University
Creative Non-fiction
Renowned writer of creative non-fiction Ben Barkow is an alumnus of Middlesex University. Barkow was born in Berlin but lived in London from the age of four. After employment as a researcher at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, he was the director of The Wiener Holocaust Library from 1998 to 2019. Amongst his celebrated works are Alfred Wiener and the Making of the Holocaust Library, Testaments of the Holocaust (as series editor), and Philipp Manes, As Though it were a Life. He is also a member of the editorial advisory board of Jewish Renaissance magazine.
Jewish Renaissance
Middlesex University also has a strong tradition in the researching, teaching and publishing of creative non-fiction. Academic Lorna Gibb is the author of Lady Hester: Queen of the East and West’s World: The Extraordinary Life of Dame Rebecca West. Her first novel, A Ghost’s Story, was published by Granta in 2015, while Childless Voices: Stories of Longing, Loss, Resistance and Choice was published in 2019.
Lorna Gibb
Meanwhile, current lecturer Lucie Brownlee published Life after You with Virgin Books. The book was a Sunday Times bestseller and one of Richard and Judy’s Autumn Book Club picks for 2015 – the only non-fiction title on the list! It was voted as the overall Autumn Bookclub Reader’s Choice title. Lucie has an autobiographical essay included in the Unattached anthology published by Penguin, and her PhD thesis is entitled The Grey Space: Notions of Loss in Writing Real Lives (Critical thesis) & The Sculptress, A work of creative non-fiction.
Middlesex University teaches creative non-fiction as a part of its BA Creative Writing and Journalism and BA English. In addition, we are looking to launch an MA Writing Creative Non-fiction from Sept 2022, so watch this space. For reference, the ‘genres’ taught will include memoir, autobiography/autofiction, true crime, biography, place and travel writing, food writing, and journalistic commentary. Expressions of interest can be sent to Dr Adam Lively, Dr Adam Dalton or Dr Ariel Kahn.
Lucie Brownlee