Dr Jess Richards

Profile

My academic background is in performance writing and visual performance from Dartington College of Arts.

My fine art / creative writing PhD project: Illusions, Transformations, and Iterations; storytelling as fiction, image, and artefact earned a place on the Dean’s List at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand.

I am the author of three literary fiction novels: Snake Ropes, Cooking with Bones and City of Circles (Sceptre 2012–17). I have also published creative nonfiction, vispo, short fiction, visual essays, and poetry in many literary magazines and peer reviewed academic journals.

My most recent book publication is Birds and Ghosts, an experimental work of creative nonfiction (Linen Press 2023). 

Awards and Nominations

• Snake Ropes was shortlisted for: the Costa First Novel Award and longlisted for the Green Carnation Prize and Scottish Book Awards in 2012–13
• City of Circles was shortlisted for the novel category of the Kitschies Awards 2017
• Cooking with Bones was longlisted for the Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker’ prize, 2013 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014
• The Ardtornish/Scottish Book Trust Retreat 2014
• Cove Park Literature Residency 2013 
• Creative Scotland (Scottish Arts Council) Artist and Creative Talent Programme Award 2014
• Invited Visiting Correspondent, Deep Anatomy – Psi#24: Fluid States, international performance art event, the Bahamas, 2015

Responsibilities

• Programme Lead MA Creative Writing

Research interests

Books (creative writing)

• Birds and Ghosts
• Snake Ropes
• Cooking with Bones
• City of Circles

Other examples of my creative practice research:

• Fragile Gramarye Journal Issue 23 Chichester Centre for Fairytales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction (University of Chichester, UK.) 
• Shiver Sugar Vicarious Vocalities Conference, Newcastle University 
• Untellable Stories – An Essay in Images and Lists The Blue Notebook Vol 17 No 2 Artists’ Books – Printmaking Centre for Print Research (UWE Bristol UK).
• Skin Stilt Rumple and Child Snow Gramarye Journal Issue 21 Chichester Centre for Fairytales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction (University of Chichester, UK).
• Beauty, Sleeping. On Repair: Performance Research 26:4. (Routledge Journals)
• From Unwanted Memory to ‘Palimtext’ – A Creative Writing Process Through a Series of Textual Iterations. Memory Works, Memory Connection Volume 3, Number 1. 
• Performance as Text: Text as Performance: Love Like Salt, a collaboration between a writer and an artist. On Writing and Performance: Performance Research 23:2. (Routledge Journals)
• Article contributor and co-editor (2018) Visual Performance: A Way of Being Training Places, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (peer reviewed via Exeter University UK)
• Drowned / Undrowned sections within polyvocal paper collated and edited by Dr Sam Trubridge. Sudden Depth: Fluid States in the Shallow Sea.

Qualifications

• PhD Illusions, Transformations, and Iterations; storytelling as fiction, image, artefact
• BA Hons Visual Performance

Professional memberships

• National Association of Writers in Education
• Society of Authors

Student education

Creative Writing Lecturer

Programme Lead for MA Creative Writing (2023-)