Jem Poster

Jem PosterJem Poster is Professor and Director of Creative Writing in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, Wales. He joined the department in 2003, after ten years as Lecturer in Literature with Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, where he was founder-director of the university’s Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing. His critical work includes George Crabbe: Selected Poetry (Carcanet, 1986) and The Thirties Poets (Open University Press, 1993). His collection of poetry, Brought to Light, was published by Bloodaxe in 2001, and his first novel, Courting Shadows, was published by Sceptre in 2002. He has won first prize in both the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the Peterloo Poets Open Poetry Competition, and in June 2003 won one of the UK Arts Council’s annual Writers’ Awards to assist with the writing of his second novel, Rifling Paradise (2006). Courting Shadows was published in the USA in 2008 by Overlook Press; Rifling Paradise, also published by Overlook, appeared in 2009. He is Academic Director of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.