Clare Fisher
School of English
Lecturer in Creative Writing
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
-
I'm a writer of contemporary literary fiction and creative non-fiction. My first novel, All the Good Things, was published by Viking in 2017 and won a Betty Trask Award. My short story collection, How the Light Gets In, was published in 2018 by Influx Press and longlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Award and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. My second collection of short fiction, The Moon is Trending, was published by Salt in 2023. My work has been translated into over six languages and has been published in journals such as TOLKA, The London Magazine, Lithub, Gertrude Press, and 3:AM.
In 2023, I completed a practice-led PhD in Creative Writing, funded by the AHRC, at the University of Leeds. Titled, Awkward Positions: Experiments with Failure in Creative Writing, it uses queer theory and experimental writing methods to illuminate and subvert narratives of success and failure in contemporary publishing and Creative Writing Studies. It pays particular attention to the paradoxes of trying and failing to write from and with the body by placing critical and creative methodologies of reading and writing into productively awkward relation to one another.
I have taught Creative Writing at the University of Leeds, Queen Mary University London, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Leeds Arts University; I've also taught in schools, art galleries, community centres, and in a women's prison. I was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the School of Law, University of Leeds, 2019 - 21.
- Qualifications
-
PhD in Creative Writing, University of Leeds (2023)
MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2011)
BA (Hons) in History at Exeter College, University of Oxford (2009)
- Research interests
-
My research focuses on the methods and methodologies of contemporary prose writing. Whilst my background is primarily in fiction, I have become increasingly interested in creative non-fiction, creative-critical, hybrid, and otherwise category-resistant, prose. I am particularly interested interested in writing which foregrounds the difficulties, ambiguities and paradoxes of writing through and with the body, and for the implications of such a writing for established methodologies of reading in both Creative Writing and Literary Studies. I'm also interested in cross-disciplinary collaboration, the possibilities it provides for creative experimentation, and the relationship between such experiments and the numerous structural crises which mark the contemporary moment.
I am open to new practice-led PhD projects in relevant fields. I am currently co-supervising a number of projects including queer fiction, experimental memoir, Buddhist science fiction, and reimagined illness narratives.
- Publications
-
Books
Journal articles
- ‘Sarahland would trick me into thinking it was the entire world’: Sam Cohen’s short story cycle as queer ecology. Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 14(1), 27-40.
- The Centrality of the Trivial: Reading Jenny Offill’s Weather. Alluvium: 21st-Century Writing, 21st-Century Approaches, 7(5).
Chapters
Exhibitions
Other
- ‘Sarahland would trick me into thinking it was the entire world’: Sam Cohen’s short story cycle as queer ecology. Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 14(1), 27-40.
- Teaching interests
-
I currently convene the following modules:
Undergraduate:
- EGH225: Writing Fiction 2: Short Fiction: Genre and Experiment
- EGH343: Writing Fiction 3: Creative and Destructive Writing
Postgraduate:
- EGH440: Fiction, Genre, Theory - Bodies and Landscapes
- EGH441:Prose, Ekphrasis, Ritual Writing - Prose Transformations
I also lecture on Mod Cons: Exploring the Long 20th Century and supervise creative writing dissertations at UG and MA level.
- Professional activities and memberships
-
External Examiner in Creative Writing, University of Manchester
Fellow of the Higher Education Association
Bridge Fellow, Royal Literary Fund