I’m honoured to have received the Chancellor’s Alumni Award 2024 from University of Roehampton, the only graduate to date in Creative Writing to have received this award. I completed my PhD at Roehampton in 2014 and worked with exceptional colleagues to whom I will always owe a huge debt of gratitude.

I am proud to have received this award as it speaks to the quality of education I received at Roehampton, the value of that degree, the support I received from the PhD supervisors and committee, and the colleagues that I have made across the UK.

That said, I will probably also be the only recipient of this award from Creative Writing at Roehampton.

Roehampton University instituted mass lay-offs and the elimination of a number of humanities-based programs including classics, anthropology, photography, creative writing. Those shameful lay-offs, which included the destruction of the department of creative writing, has meant job losses for many exceptional peers and colleagues – folks who were vital to the UK poetry and prose communities, who demonstrated mentorship and teaching of the highest level, who were publishing consistently, and who were instrumental in my own career. Many were given untenable options for the continuance of their careers, and have found themselves in tenuous positions since.

University education in the UK is in crisis, but we can not look to resolve that crisis by cutting in the arts and humanities.

We are better than that.