Craig Jordan-Baker is interested in how creative writing articulates itself as a subject of academic study and what that means for how writing is taught. Despite being an academic subject for well over a century, there is a lack of clarity about what creative writing is for and how it relates to the other humanities and arts subjects. This question is important because behind each conception of creative writing, there are assumptions about creativity, the role of interpretation, the socio-cultural view of the artist and the unity of the arts.

As well as an interest in Creative Writing Studies, Craig has a diversity of interests that have affected his teaching and writing. As a keen walker and forager, Craig is interested in the literary representation of landscape and teaches the module ‘Reading and Writing Landscape’, as well having written on the subject. He is also interested in Irish literature and history, the relationship between text and image and Medieval English texts, such as Beowulf, which he adapted for the stage in 2013.

Here’s Craig speaking about his project and the poem itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea1yuH5lJ64

Craig has published peer-reviewed research in publications such as New Writing: The International Journal of Creative Writing Theory and Practice, Journal of Creative Writing Studies, Archives and Records and Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, as well as having given many conference papers. He intends to explore this in depth in a monograph provisionally titled Creative Writing: Imagining, Thinking and Knowing. He is also a peer-reviewer for the journals New Writing: The International Journal of Creative Writing Theory and Practice, Journal of Creative Writing Studies and Writing in Practice.

Craig has a background as dramatist and his puppet adaptation of Beowulf was awarded ACE funding and won an IdeasTap Brighton Fringe Award. His short fiction has been published widely in places such as New Writing, Text and Potluck and he holds residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. His first novel, The Nacullians was published in 2020 by Epoque Press and has been described by the Irish Times as 'a multi-layered treatise on memory and the stories we tell ourselves'. He currently supervises three PhD students. He is interested in supervising subjects relating to theoretical and disciplinary issues in Creative Writing, the gaps between creative and critical writing, and the representation of landscape and space.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/CraigJordanBak1

I am interested in supervising critical and ficto-critical projects that explore the nature and processes of art formation and interdiscplinarity within the arts. Linked to this, I am interested in projects that explore the history, theory and status of creative writing as a subject.

Any research project involved in questions of the representation of landscape and the uses of setting within literature are also of interest. 

Craig Jordan-Baker is interested in how creative writing articulates itself as a subject of academic study and what that means for how writing is taught. Despite being an academic subject for well over a century, there is a lack of clarity about what creative writing is for and how it relates to the other humanities and arts subjects. This question is important because behind each conception of creative writing, there are assumptions about creativity, the role of interpretation, the socio-cultural view of the artist and the unity of the arts.