Staff

Clare Higginbotham is the Operations Coordinator for the Newcastle Centre of the Liteerary Arts.

Professor of Creative Writing

Alex Pheby is the author of ground-breaking literary fiction including Playthings, shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize and Lucia, which was joint winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His epic fantasy trilogy Cities of the Weft includes Mordew, selected as a Book of the Year by The Guardian, The I, Tor.com and Locus and published in the UK and USA; the second book in the series, Malarkoi was published in 2022. Alex has taught at the University of Greenwich and Sunderland University and now teaches at all stages of Creative Writing at Newcastle, specialising in fantasy, world building, YA, and adult literary prose. 

Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing, Director of NCLA 

Preti’s first novel We That Are Young a translation of Shakespeare's King Lear, tracks the rise of fascism in contemporary India. It won the 2018 Desmond Elliott Prize for the UK's finest literary debut of the year, and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski, Europe’s premier award for a work of world literature. It is published in translation worldwide. Her second book is Aftermath, a creative non-fiction lament on trauma, terror, prison and grief, following the London Bridge terror attack in 2019. It was a Book of the Year in the New Yorker, the New Statesman and The White Review, and was shortlisted for the British Book of the Year awards. Aftermath is the winner of the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize awarded 'for literature that is forward thinking and fearless in its ambition and execution'. Preti teaches all stages of Creative Writing at Newcastle and has also taught for Faber Academy, in prisons, adult education centres and for festivals. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.