Course Director MA Creative Writing & Publishing. Senior Lecturer Practitioner, Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University.
I have extensive experience as a university lecturer in publishing and nonfiction writing, and as course leader and department manager. I set up Publishing as a new creative subject area at Bath Spa University, after having taught the MA Publishing at University of Plymouth, with the aim of increasing diversity in the industry. I’ve worked with colleagues to create innovative and supportive learning spaces where students can be challenged to experiment, collaborate, discover their passions – and build their creative practice expertise across print, digital and live experiences.
Industry collaboration and employability are embedded in my module and course design for the benefit of students, who might be first in their family to attend university and who gain an all-important confidence boost from working with industry experts on a live project. I’ve worked with many companies and organisations to curate high-quality projects for students, including the BBC, National Trust, Penguin Random House, TEDx events, and Future Publishing.
I am passionate about the role of university education in creating a publishing industry for everyone and have been invited to speak on this topic at the London Book Fair seminars and other conferences. I supported the Publishers Association in raising the profile of the industry among young people by directing a short film about the stages at jobs involved in making a book. This involved putting a film and publishing team together, then interviewing a well-known fantasy author and HarperCollins staff to tell the story of a book’s journey through the publishing process.
Working closely with arts organisations, colleagues and students, I’ve run book-making workshops for children which have run year after year, resulting in over 1000 hand-made books full of imaginative stories and wonderful illustrations. I also worked with a group of primary school children – they were the publishers – to guide them in making a digital book of their class’s artwork. They selected typefaces, came up with cover layout ideas and worked as a team to organise the book’s structure.
I was delighted to work with the Society of Young Publishers to bring a new regional branch to the southwest in 2018. The launch team for the new SYPSW were amazing and it’s great to this this branch thriving with mentor schemes, networking events and conferences for university students and publishers across the region.
Seeing students flourish as graduates is immensely rewarding. They have gone into a wide variety of careers from BBC data engineer to book production director, senior creative content executive to international journalist, social media strategist to digital magazine designer.
Katharine Reeve 