Dr Kerry Featherstone

  • PGT Programme Co-Leader (English)
  • Lecturer in English

Specialism: Creative Writing and Contemporary Travel

Kerry Featherstone studied English and European Literature at the University of Essex before moving to Nottingham Trent University to complete his PhD thesis on Bruce Chatwin. As well as teaching at those institutions, he has taught at the University of Lincoln, the Open University and the Université de technologie Belfort-Montbéliard.

Having spent considerable time in France, he writes poetry in French as well as English, and has given research papers in French at international conferences. He has presented his research at conferences in the UK as well as Paris, Rennes and Versailles in France and in Madrid, Leipzig, Derry and Georgetown.

Kerry is passionate about developing the craft and careers of writers, and brings this passion to his teaching and supervision. He has spent fifteen years on the board of trustees of Apples and Snakes, the Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation for Spoken Word Poetry and Education.

Kerry is fascinated by the relationship between location and identity, particularly in the ways that individual lives are affected by their surroundings and in turn leave their traces in the landscape: this fires his imagination! He has been poet in residence at Alford Manor House in Lincolnshire and at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire – home of Lady Jane Gray, the ‘nine days queen’. He has written about the ways in which human activity is present in the landscape both visually and in the imagination. His current creative projects include a novel about a young English man being tempted into believing he is something he is not, and a series of poems based on the interpretation and history of a range of English landscapes.

As well as poetry, forthcoming publications also include collaborative research: with his colleague Anne-Marie Beller, the first translation from French to English of a ‘lost’ novella by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and an essay on Victorian Women Travel Writers’ encounters with Islam as well as, with Barbara Cooke, an essay on the role of dopamine production in reading and writing creatively.

Kerry's main responsibilities are in creative writing. He convenes the creative writing modules ‘Maps and Motors: The Writing Portfolio’ and ‘Driving On: Writing Towards Publication’. He is also the Programme Lead for the MA in Creative Writing and the Writing Industries. As well as convening the module on professional development module on working as a writer, he leads workshops on aspects of poetry, travel-writing and heritage interpretation – including working with the history and landscape of locations such as Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.

Recent postgraduate research student topics