The Contemporary Women’s Writing Association and the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Metropolitan University held a day conference on Contemporary Women’s Writing and Literary Prize Culture. Video podcasts from this event have been made available by Leeds Metropolitan University.

Clare Hey – ‘Literary prizes, the publishing industry, digital publishing and short stories’

Clare Hey is a fiction editor at Simon and Schuster and runs Shortfire Press, a digital publisher specialising in short stories by new and established authors.

Gillian Roberts – ‘Literary prizes, national identity, postcoloniality and the case of Esi Edugyan’.

Gillian Roberts is lecturer in North American Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham and the author of Prizing Literature: the Celebration and Circulation of National Culture

Helen Cousins and Jenni Ramone – ‘Literary prizes and reading groups’

Helen Cousins and Jenni Ramone are both co-editors of The Richard and Judy Book Club Reader. Helen is Acting Head of English, Newman University, Birmingham. Jenni is Senior Lecturer in English, Nottingham Trent University.

Jane Rogers – Reading from The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Hitting Trees with Sticks and other work

Jane Rogers is the author of seven novels, has written original television and radio drama, and adapted work (her own and others’) for radio and TV. She adapted her novel Mr Wroe’s Virgins for BBC2 in 1993. It was directed by Danny Boyle, and starred Jonathan Pryce, Kathy Burke, Lia Williams, Kerry Fox and Minnie Driver. Her most recent novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb begins serialisation on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour on the day of this event. Her collection of short stories, Hitting Trees with Sticks was published in October 2012.

Jane Rodgers interviewed by Dr Susan Watkins

Susan Watkins is a Reader in English Literature at Leeds Metropolitan University and Chair of the CWWA. Her main research interests are in the field of twentieth-century and contemporary women’s fiction and feminist theory. She is the author of Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice (Palgrave Mamcillan, 2001) and has co-edited, with Mary Eagleton, a special issue of The Journal of Gender Studies on ‘The Future of Fiction: The Future of Feminism’. .