Centre Directors and Members

Co-Director Dr Helen Lynch is Reader in Early Modern Literature and Creative Writing. Her publications include The Elephant and the Polish Question (Bluechrome, 2009) and Milton and the Politics of Public Speech, (Ashgate, 2015). Her second collection of stories, Tea for the Rent Boy, completed with the help of a Writers’ Bursary from Creative Scotland, was published in 2018. 

Co-Director Dr Wayne Price is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing. His publications include a short story collection, Furnace (Freight Books, 2012), nominated for the Saltire First Book of the Year, poetry, Fossil Record (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), and a novel, Mercy Seat (Freight Books, 2015), long-listed for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. His short stories have been widely published in UK and international magazines and anthologies, including Best European Fiction 2017.  

Mr Alan Warner is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. He is the author of acclaimed novels Morvern Callar (1995), adapted for the screen by Lynne Ramsay (2002), These Demented Lands (1997), and The Sopranos (1998), adapted for stage and screen (National Theatre of Scotland, 2015; Michael Caton-Jones, 2019). Recent works include The Deadman's Pedal (2013), and Their Lips Talk of Mischief (2015). Twice winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award (1995, 2002), he brings to the Centre his knowledge of stage and screen adaptation of his own and others’ work. 

Dr David Wheatley is Reader in English and Creative Writing. In 2017, David Wheatley published his collection The President of Planet Earth in UK and American editions, with Carcanet and Wake Forest University Press, and also a volume of translations, Foreign News, from the Irish-language poetry of Aifric Mac Aodha. Since then he has published in a number of poetry pamphlets, including one with former Aberdeen University student Ollie Tong’s Glyph Press. He has featured in the pan-European anthology Grand Tour (2019) and recently had a poem in the New York Review of Books. 

The Centre’s twelve Honorary Fellows actively engage budding writers and diverse audiences. Through the Centre’s ’Mapping-the-North-East’ and ’Creative Compositions’ projects, they have been able to focus on young-people/adult groups from local areas sometimes described as culturally excluded and economically deprived. 

• Leila Aboulela
• Sheena Blackhall
• Georgia Brooker
• Dr Jen Cooper
• Dr Ian Crockatt
• Dr Alec Finlay
• Martin Malone
• Dr Olive Ritch
• Dr Shane Strachan
• Dr Emily Utter
• Dr Petra Vergunst

Affiliated Staff are actively involved in collaborations such as the Five Irish Writers Series, Wirds an Soons, and WORD related events during May Festival. They include: 

• Dr Timothy C. Baker
• Dr Leeanne Bodkin
• Professor Michael Brown
• Professor Amy Bryzgel
• Professor Cairns Craig
• Dr Elizabeth Curtis
• Mr Neil Curtis
• Dr Elizabeth Elliot
• Mr Simon Gall
• Dr Helena Ifill
• Dr Katya Krylova
• Dr Áine Larkin
• Professor Alison Lumsden
• Dr Thomas McKean
• Professor Shane Alcobia Murphy
• Dr Sarah Sharp
• Professor Emeritus Alan Spence
• Professor Peter Stollery
• Dr Tim Tricker
• Dr Frances Wilkins