Dr Clare Morgan

Course Director of the MSt in Creative Writing

Biography

Clare Morgan is a novelist and short story writer, whose interdisciplinary research interests currently focus on creative writing, and on the relation between literature and business.

After gaining her MPhil and DPhil from Lady Margaret Hall, and her MA in Creative Writing from University of East Anglia, she ran English at Brasenose College for two years and subsequently taught at Christ Church, specializing in British Literature, nineteenth century to the present day. She designed and implemented Oxford University’s first creative writing course for matriculated students, the Master of Studies in Creative Writing, which she now directs.

Her professional offices have included: Chair of the Literature Bursaries Panel, Arts Council of Wales; member of the Academic Advisory Board, Henley Management College; assessor for grant-aided publication, Arts Council of Wales; Fellow of the Strategy Institute, The Boston Consulting Group. She has been Sidney Holgate Visiting Fellow, University of Durham, and Gregynog Arts Fellow, University of Wales. 

She has established the Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing, which is dedicated to promoting excellence in creative writing research and to generating a vibrant writerly community through events and Masterclasses with writers of international reputation such as Sir Andrew Motion, Julian Barnes, Simon Armitage and Audrey Niffenegger.

Teaching

Dr Morgan’s teaching interests include British literature nineteenth century to the present day, and advanced fiction and critical analysis. 

Research interests

Dr Morgan's creative writing focuses on short and long fiction, and she has published a collection of short stories, An Affair of the Heart, and her work has been widely anthologized and commissioned for radio.  Dr Morgan's novel, A Book for All and None (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011) was published in paperback in February 2012.  Dr Morgan has recently engaged in the research project ‘Living with Rivers’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which explores the role of creative writing in environmental issues. She has also worked closely with the Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group in investigating the relation between poetry and business thinking, giving lectures and presentations and running workshops in many locations in the USA, continental Europe and the UK, as well as in Tokyo and Kuwait. The book from her research, What Poetry Brings to Business, (University of Michigan Press) was published by University of Michigan Press in 2010,  She is a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement

Publications

Selected books, articles and essays:

Clare Morgan, A Book for All and None (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011) 

Clare Morgan, What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press, 2010)

Clare Morgan et al, "Cognition in strategic decision-making: A model of nonconventional thinking capacities for complex situations", (Journal of Management Decision, May 2009)

Clare Morgan et al, “Poetry in the Boardroom”, (Journal of Business Strategy, 2005)

Clare Morgan, “Murdoch and Byatt: Romance and the post-modern novel”, Blackwell’s Companion to Romance (2004)                     

Clare Morgan, “George Orwell: Coming Up for Air”, Scribner’s British Writers Classics series (2003)

Clare Morgan, “Willa Cather:  My Antonia”, Scribner’s American Classics series (2002)

Clare Morgan, “Vanishing Horizons: Virginia Woolf and the Neo-Romantic Landscape in Between the Acts and ‘Anon’”, Worldviews, Vol no 2: (2002)

Clare Morgan (ed.) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Könemann (1999)

Clare Morgan, An Affair of the Heart (stories, 1996) Reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals

Presentations

Selected papers, presentations and readings:

“Living with Rivers:  Creative Writing and the Environment”, NAWE Annual Conference (November 2009)

“Oxford Women Writers” panel,  Oxford University International Alumni event: An Equal Citizenship (September 2009)

Masterclass in fiction and poetry, Oxford University International Alumni event: An Equal Citizenship (September 2009)

“Poetry and Business: Thinking Beyond the Facts” Institute of Knowledge Transfer Seminar (June 2009)

“Margiad Evans: A Writer in her Time”, Margiad Evans Centenary Conference, National Library of Wales (May 2009)

Guest Reading of fiction, Delhi International Literary Festival (December 2008)

“Virginia Woolf and Wales: An Alternative View of the Lighthouse”, English Literature Today conference, Christ Church, Oxford (2008)

“Teaching Creative Writing” (panel) and a reading of fiction, Lady Margaret Hall Literary Festival, Oxford University (2007)

Masterclass in fiction and poetry, Oxford University International Alumni event: Meeting Minds (2007)

“Critical mental capacities for effective strategic decision making in complex and unpredictable business conditions”, British Association of Management annual conference (2007)

“Poetry and Corporate Responsibility”, Boston Consulting Group, Tokyo (2006)

“Poetry and the Business Thinker”, Henley Management College, Knowledge Management Forum (2006)

Lecture series on creative writing and on the development of the Oxford University MSt in Creative Writing programme, and readings of own fiction, University of Kuwait: at the invitation of the Kuwait government (2005)

"The Role of Metaphor in Strategic Thinking”, Volkswagen University, Prague (2005)

“Poetry and Transformation”, European Conference of Learning Organizations (2005) 

“Virginia Woolf and her World”, University of Massachusetts, (2004)         

“Virginia Woolf, Neo Romanticism and Wales”, University of Wales, (2004)

“Woolf and Wales”, International Virginia Woolf Society Conference, Smith College, USA (2003)

“Romance in the Works of A S Byatt and Iris Murdoch”, Conference of the European Society for the Study of English, Defining Romance (2003)

“Between Worlds: Virginia Woolf and the Neo-Romantic Imagination”, International Virginia Woolf Society Annual Conference (2002) 

“Vanishing Horizons: Virginia Woolf and the Neo-Romantic Landscape in Between the Acts and ‘Anon’”, University of Durham (2000)