Conversations with Writers

Corinne Fowler is a lecturer in the School of English at the University of Leicester. Her work includes Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of Ideas about Afghanistan (Editions Rodopi B.V, 2007); Travel Writing and Ethics: Theory and Practice (Routledge, forthcoming) and Postcolonial Manchester: the literary response (Manchester University Press, forthcoming). In this video, she talks about Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing , an Arts Council funded project which, among other things, aims to promote transcultural Leicester writing: The reason I devised this project was because I found, in my research, that books written by London-based writers, especially if they've got a strong transcultural element, tend to enjoy much wider readerships than those written by ... than those that are transcultural novels and plays and so on, in the regions. What I wanted to do was to try and promote public awareness of the kind of scope and diversity an...

Dr Corinne Fowler is an author and a lecturer at the University of Leicester's School of English. She is also the lead person behind Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing , a project which aims to raise public awareness of Leicestershire’s diverse literary culture and foster local, national and international critical recognition for the writing. The project is being supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and will deliver its aims by summer 2012 through five main outputs, namely: an e-catalogue of transcultural writing by Leicester-based authors from 1980 up to now;  an online Writers’ Gallery with 50 author pages; a £1,000 creative writing commission ;  an exhibition focusing on Leicestershire writers; and, a Grassroutes blog on the Literature Network . Dr Fowler was encouraged by recent studies on Britain’s writing, as well as her own research, which revealed a great imbalance between London and regional writers’ readerships, f...