Centre for Women’s Writing and Literary Culture

Dr Tiffany Atkinson (Deputy Director of CWWLC), Dr Rebecca Davies (Aberystwyth), Dr Sarah Prescott (Director of CWWLC), Professor Margaret J.M. Ezell of Texas A&M University, Professor Diane Watt (Head of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth).

Dr Tiffany Atkinson (Deputy Director of CWWLC), Dr Rebecca Davies (Aberystwyth), Dr Sarah Prescott (Director of CWWLC), Professor Margaret J.M. Ezell of Texas A&M University, Professor Diane Watt (Head of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth).

01 June 2011

On Tuesday 31st of May, members of Aberystwyth University’s English and Creative Writing Department and their guests celebrated the launch of the new Centre for Women’s Writing and Literary Culture (CWWLC).

Operational since 2010, the CWWLC draws on the extensive research into women’s writing that is currently being carried out within the English and Creative writing department. In total, there are ten members of the department and fourteen postgraduates within the department who are active researchers in this field.

Staff publish widely on women’s writing from the medieval period to the present day and the department also boasts a number of practitioners of creative writing who are published women writers themselves, such as the CWWLC’s Deputy Director, Dr Tiffany Atkinson.

In the future the centre intends to host an annual lecture presented by a key figure in the field and will organise a major international conference every three years In addition, it will mount a series of workshops and colloquia organised by, and shaped for, postgraduate members.

After preliminary introductions, Tuesday’s event commenced with the CWWLC Inaugural Annual Lecture, entitled“Seventeenth-Century Female Author Portraits, Or, The Company She Keeps”, by Professor Margaret J. M. Ezell, a Distinguished Professor and the Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts at Texas A& M University.

The afternoon programme included poetry readings from Gwyneth Lewis and Alicia Stubbersfield, a lecture entitled 50 rooms of their own: Chawton House Library and Jane Austen in 2011 by Dr Gillian Dow of the Chawton House Library at the University of Southampton and a presentation of plans for future collaboration between the Chawton House library and the CWWLC by Stephen Lawrence (Chief Executive, Chawton House Library) and Dr Rebecca Davies (Aberystwyth University). 

The event culminated with a presentation in which Honno Press, a publisher of Welsh women’s writing, donated a collection of books to the Centre to mark the launch.

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