Centre for Place Writing

Description

Since the millennium there has been an explosion of interest in place writing: literature that moves setting from the background to the foreground, figuring place as the foremost subject. This preoccupation with place is evident across a range of literary forms including creative nonfiction, fiction and poetry, with place writing rapidly becoming one of the most important and popular emerging new literary genres.

A cluster of writers and creative-critical thinkers from Manchester Metropolitan’s Department of English established the Centre for Place Writing.

The Centre’s aim is to develop new research in the field and promote the study of the genre, alongside providing a platform to discuss and showcase new thinking and writing on place.

Researchers at the Centre define place writing as writing that seeks, in the language of the academy, to ‘generate new knowledge’ about place and human relationships with place, through a deeper or more intense engagement, or by unearthing or producing new data and perspectives. The diverse range of locations explored within place writing can include the multifarious forms of landscapes conventionally described as ‘natural’ to those of the contemporary city, as well as ‘edgeland’ locations, sites of erasure or displacement and every place and ‘non place’ in between.

The Centre for Place Writing acknowledges the current lack of diversity in the literary field of place writing and is committed to changing the cultural landscape of the genre. It aims to play a leading role in actively reshaping the field through public engagement activities, events, workshops, teaching and projects.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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University affiliation(s)

Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester