Huw Marsh

Can we shift away from low-quality UUK leadership?

On the subject of Melvyn Bragg, I think of this Private Eye cartoon more frequently than I care to admit, when I’m struggling to raise the energy for a lecture or graduate supervision

Save our pioneering widening participation undergraduate degree in English Literature and Community Engagement at the University of Bristol 19 August 2025 Dear Evelyn Welch (Vice-Chancellor) cc Judith Squires (Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost), Tansy Jessop (Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students) The School of Humanities has ...

Pls sign and share this open letter to the Bristol VC, against the School of Humanities's decision to withdraw the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement (ELCE): the only part-time, flexible undergraduate degree programme available at the University forms.gle/SbyhXPSJgQTc...

Faber paperback edition of Waiting for Godot with STAGE MANAGER'S COPY / NIGEL written on the cover in pencil

End of Act 1 of Waiting for Godot: beneath 'CURTAIN' someone has written the capitalised words, in pencil, 'INTERMISSION / DO LEAVES'

Famously, between the first and the second act of Waiting for Godot, the only difference in the stage set is that a previously bare tree ‘has four or five leaves’. So what’s the main note to self I found in this copy which seems to have belonged to a stage manager called Nigel...?

Over 1000 signatories in 36 hours!

Let's make it 2000 by the weekend 👇

Please sign 👇

Please circulate 👇

Job alert! We're looking to hire a fixed-term Lecturer in Literature here at the University of Essex. We're particularly interested in candidates with specialisms in C20th and C21st literature, comparative literature, critical theory, and Holocaust writing. vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

Nicola Barker in Conversation with Isabel Waidner The Booker shortlisted author of Darkmans launches her profound and comic new novel, TonyInterruptor, in a conversation with Isabel Waidner

Heads-up: this, in August @grantabooks.bsky.social @foylesforbooks.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nicola-bar...

Be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told Guidance has been published by the Office for Students on new free speech rules coming into force this year.

If anyone feels it's important to be exposed to 'views they find offensive', they can just look at Twitter for ten seconds. Universities have more serious work to do www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...

Be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told Guidance has been published by the Office for Students on new free speech rules coming into force this year.

*first year lecture, academic strides in*

“right you sickos, im here to tell you once and for all THE FOOTNOTE GOES AFTER THE PUNCTUATION”

*students wail, gnash teeth, vomit*

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Job Vacancy at Edge Hill University: Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in English We’re here to create and harness knowledge, to deliver opportunity for everyone.About the RoleAs Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in English, you will be required to make a significant contribution to the ...

ENGLISH LIT JOB! A rare beast spotted in the wild! Come work with us! I’ll provide snacks!

jobs.edgehill.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Lecturer in Creative Writing and Digital Technologies(ATS1307) in University of East Anglia | UEA View details and apply for this Lecturer in Creative Writing and Digital Technologies(ATS1307) vacancy in University of East Anglia. Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Literatur...

A rare thing to see in the wild these days: a Creative Writing lectureship (fixed term) at the University of East Anglia vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/15...

Cover image for MFS 71.1. Features two black and white abstract human figures against a vibrant yellow, read, and blue background.

Modern Fiction Studies has joined BlueSky! We'll be posting CFPs and announcing new issues.

Our Spring 2025 issue is now available and open-access on Project Muse! Look for us there, or check out our newsletter here: vr2.verticalresponse.com/emails/48378...

A really good opportunity here to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia: the Birch Family Scholarship is available to a home fees applicant who has applied for a place on the Poetry MA and identifies as a writer of colour. Deadline: 30 May. Please RT! www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

For the sake of 10FTE jobs, UEA are still pressing ahead with compulsory redundancies. Some of these folk are friends & colleagues in my department. This doesn’t have to happen & is an enormous error of management #SaveUEA

This looks excellent, and is available open access too!

Sceptre triumphs in four-way auction for 'distinctive and gripping' new biography of Muriel Spark Sceptre has triumphed in a four-way auction for Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, James Bailey's biography of Muriel Spark. Editorial director Charlotte Humphery bought British Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from John Ash at CAA. Sceptre will publish the book in physical, e-book and audio formats in April 2026, to mark the 20th anniversary of Spark's death.

"As sly, nimble and elegant as Spark's own work, Like a Cat Loves a Bird is a thrilling new perspective on a remarkable life and career of one of Britain's greatest writers," the synopsis says. "From her childhood in Edinburgh to her final years in Tuscany - via South Africa, London, New York and Rome - it traces a light-footed journey around the world and through her strange and magnificent bibliography. It tells an irresistible story of transformation, wit and fierce determination and makes a passionate case for this vital modern artist." Humphery said: "As a keen reader, I thought I knew and admired Muriel Spark. But Like a Cat Loves a Bird has shown me how much more there is to understand and adore about this fierce, spiky and incomparable writer. I am obsessed and it is all thanks to James Bailey, who has written the kind of biography that I most love - one that is both deeply researched and knowledgeable but also vibrant, distinctive and gripping."

Bailey added: "For a long time, I've thought of Muriel Spark as modern literature's finest shapeshifter. Over the course of her 88 years, and in the 20 years since her death, she has remained elusive, contradictory and endlessly fascinating; just when you think you have the measure of her, she slips out of sight before reinventing herself anew. Getting to tell the story - or rather the many stories - of her life and work has been a writing experience like no other."

A photograph of Muriel Spark holding a black cat and smiling at the camera

The cat’s out of the bag! 🐈‍⬛

LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD, my weird, slippery biography of Muriel Spark, will be out in April next year.

A huge thank you to the team at @sceptrebooks.bsky.social for helping me bring it to life.

Please tell your libraries and favourite bookshops!

The Crab Museum is the best thing in Margate. Maybe the best thing in all of Kent.

Hello, BlueSky! We're happy to be here!

We have a brilliant new issue for you! Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2025) is now available: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1419/i.... There are new articles on peripheral readings of poetry, the Scottish Network Novel, the new sub-genre of up-lit & reviews. Plus more articles coming soon! #OpenAccess #AcaSky

Thanks Denise!

Excited to get to talk about my first (and forthcoming) monograph at #issn2025 tomorrow! 📖 Thank you to @edinburghup.bsky.social for supplying me with these wee cards 💥

If you, or someone you know, is thinking about doing a Poetry MA next year, I'm here to tell you that at UEA we have two scholarships available, closing date 1st April (Tuesday!): The Ink Sweat and Tears (www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-a...) and The Birch Family (www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-a...) Please RT!

Well, shit, there goes the title of my memoir of my days as Head of my Department….

“Bullshit” Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Workplace Novel In a 2013 article and later in a book-length study, David Graeber introduced the term “bullshit jobs” to describe the proliferation of a category of job “that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, ...

Posting this before the pleasure of a new publication turns to shame and embarrassment about its inadeqacies. My article '"Bullshit" Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Workplace Novel' is out now in _Contemporary Literature_ cl.uwpress.org/content/65/2....

ah, would be nice if universities removed the unnecessary *work*, not the necessary workers who do the work both necessary and unnecessary.

Admin bloat is real. A bunch of it can be weeded. But you can't weed the people ACTUALLY KEEPING THINGS AFLOAT (and then assume academics will just pick it up)

“Bullshit” Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Workplace Novel In a 2013 article and later in a book-length study, David Graeber introduced the term “bullshit jobs” to describe the proliferation of a category of job “that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, ...

Posting this before the pleasure of a new publication turns to shame and embarrassment about its inadeqacies. My article '"Bullshit" Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Workplace Novel' is out now in _Contemporary Literature_ cl.uwpress.org/content/65/2....

Here's Severance but Mr Milchick is Alan Johnson from Peep Show. Enjoy.