For many years now the professional "creative writer" within universities and other institutions has encompassed a range of roles, embracing a plurality of scholarly and creative identities. The often complex relation between those identities forms the broad focus of this book, which also examines various, and variously fraught, dialogues between creative writers, "hybrid" writers and academic colleagues from other subjects within single institutions, and with the public and the media. At the heart of the book is the principle of "creative writing" as a fully-fledged discipline, an important subject for debate at a time when the future of the humanities is in crisis; the contributors, all writers and teachers themselves, provide first-hand views on crucial questions: What are the most fruitful intersections between creative writing and scholarship? What methodological overlaps exist between creative writing and literary studies, and what can each side of the "divide" learn from its counterpart? Equally, from a pedagogical perspective, what kind of writing should be taught to students to ensure that the discipline remains relevant? And is the writing workshop still the best way of teaching creative writing? The essays here tackle these points from a range of perspectives, including close readings, historical contextualisation and theoretical exploration. Professor Richard Marggraf Turley teaches in the Department of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University.BR Contributors: Richard Marggraf Turley, Damian Walford Davies, Philip Gross, Peter Barry, Kevin Mills, Tiffany Atkinson, Robert Sheppard, Deryn Rees-Jones, Zoe Skoulding, Jasmine Donahaye

Rooted in a Jewish family history that reaches into 19th-century Ottoman Palestine, "Self-Portrait as Ruth" is written in defiance of all official versions of Israeli or Palestinian history. A challenging, aching, honest exploration of culpability, this lament will incite controversy and debate. These poems are interrogations of the first-person possessive of claims, both singular and plural, to land, to identity, to history, and to the body and of wounds and victimization, both unique and collective."

Sexually frank and politically charged, this debut collection of poetry ranges from the Israel/Palestine conflict and the experience of immigration, emigration and displacement, to the dark aspects of childhood, motherhood and sexuality, explored against urban and rural landscapes of Israel. Wales, England, and California. Misappropriations was shortlisted for the 2006 Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for Poetry.

Wales has a long history of interest in Palestine and Israel, and a close interest in Jews and Zionism. This monograph, the first to explore the subject, asks searching questions about the relationship that Wales has with the Israel-Palestine situation. Surveying Welsh missionary writing, fictional imaging of Jews, and the political use of Palestine and Israel, it challenges received wisdom about Welsh tolerance and liberalism, and identifies a complex and unique relationship. Whose People? Wales, Israel, Palestine makes an important contribution to international Jewish studies, to the study of British colonial involvement in Palestine, and to Welsh and Jewish literary and cultural history.)