Nicholas Royle lives in Seaford and is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He teaches literature at undergraduate level and supervises PhD students, as well as directing the MA programme in Creative and Critical Writing.
His academic writing is distinguished, in unusual ways, by playful language and linguistic invention. Since at least his early teens, when he wrote an abandoned work called The Foresight Saga, he has been fascinated by the strangeness of literature. This fascination has led to the publication of numerous books about literature, including the highly acclaimed Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind and The Uncanny. Despite their ‘academic’ appearances, such books contain unexpected interiors: Telepathy and Literature ends with a bizarre footnote comprising a short story called ‘Telephoning Home’; The Uncanny incorporates several pieces of short fiction (‘Exam’, ‘Chance Encounter’, ‘A Crowded After-Life’). His latest academic work, Veering: A Theory of Literature, also contains numerous embedded fictions and indeed argues for a new conception of the relations between creative and critical writing.
Royle’s commitment to clear and accessible prose appealing to a wide audience is also evident in such books as E. M. Forster, How to Read Shakespeare, and (with Andrew Bennett) the academic bestseller An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Quilt is his first novel.
If you're interested in asking Nick to visit your book group, please contact Vicky Blunden.
From an essential plot device for Chandler to the voice of God in Muriel Spark, the author explains how the telephone has wormed its way into literature, and why the novel is itself a kind of phonecall, in the Guardian.
