Languages and Literature, Nottingham Trent University
Thesis title:
Lucy Grace writes poetry, flash, short and long fiction. She is based in North Nottinghamshire and writes about nature, deep-time, geology and climate-change, reflecting how these affect human lives and relationships. Her first degree is in Geography (2:1, 1998) and subsequent Masters degrees in Education (2006) and Creative Writing (2020-22, scholarship, distinction in all modules).
Around twenty of her pieces are featured in anthologies and since 2018 she has won or been shortlisted for many awards (Winner – Writers and Artists Yearbook Short Story Award, and placed in others including Aesthetica, Mslexia, Bath, Bridport, Fish, Exeter, Alpine Fellowship, Bristol Prize, Berlin Prize, Scottish Short Story Award.) Her draft novels have been longlisted in the Bath Novel Award (twice), the Mslexia Novel Award, the Lucy Cavendish Debut Novel Award (twice), the Exeter Novel Prize and won first place in the Blue Pencil Novel Pitch Prize. Two of her climate stories have recently been optioned for screen. She is keen to develop the relative literary silence of the coalscape and encourage unheard voices.
14-16 June 2023. Paper - 'Coalscape or Coalship?' Un/Building the Future: The Country and The City in the Anthropocene. International Conference at Warwick University, UK. 
July 2023. Paper - 'What Lies Beneath: A Polysensorial Reading of the Pit Tip'. Haunted Landscapes – Dark Economies. International Conference at Falmouth University, UK. 
10 September 2024 D.H. Lawrence Festival, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, UK. Paper and discussion: 'Strikes and Bikes - My Childhood in Lawrence Country'. D.H. Lawrence Festival 2024
5 March 2024, Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham: William Thompson and John Goodridge, with Lucy Grace.
Professor Emeritus John Goodridge (NTU) gave an entertaining, informative talk about John Clare (1793-1864), and the poet William Thompson read from his pamphlet After Clare (New Walk Editions, 2022). Lucy Grace, an author of fiction and a Midlands4Cities-funded PhD candidate in English and Creative Writing at NTU, read from her novel-in-progress, set in an English coalscape.
NOTTINGHAM CREATIVE WRITING HUB – at Nottingham Trent University
1st June 2024, Green Hustle Festival, Mammoth Climate Action Cinema
January 2025 My current work is a novel set in the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire coalfield. It explores the classification of land and the position of coal spoil heaps, particularly coalfield communities’ sense of belonging to what is, in essence, a rubbish dump. These rubbish dumps are teeming with biodiversity not found elsewhere. That the material of the slopes is 300 million years old and now piled on the surface as ‘new’ land is curious. Changing weather patterns in the Anthropocene require us to care for the land differently. New literature can support humans through such changes whilst maintaining the sense of awe and wonder our natural world deserves. There may be no ‘new’ stories, but there are fresh ways of telling important, relevant themes. My novel draft is almost complete, and I write poetry and flash to communicate ideas and explore the role of witness, recorder or activist in highlighting climate emergency.
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