Dr Adam Lively

Biography

Adam Lively is a novelist, literary theorist and teacher of creative writing. He studied History at Clare College, Cambridge and Philosophy at Yale University, where he was a Mellon Fellow. After working briefly in publishing, he became a full-time writer, publishing four novels (in 1993 he was on Granta's list of twenty "Best Young British Novelists"), three non-fiction books (Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination; Democracy in Britain: A Reader; and The Great British Democracy Swindle) and contributing articles and reviews to a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Times Literary Review and the London Review of Books. He also taught creative writing in a wide variety of settings, from schools to prisons.

In the late 1990s he had a career-change, working for ten years as a researcher, producer and director of arts and current affairs documentary films for the BBC, Channel Four and some of Britain's leading independent production companies. As Producer, his credits included Jihad: The Men and Ideas behind Al Qaeda (PBS/Channel 4, 2006), which won a Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism and a CINE Golden Eagle Award, and was short-listed both for an International Emmy Award and the Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary.

In the 2010s, he returned both to fiction-writing, and to academic research. In 2016 he received his PhD from Royal Holloway College, University of London, for a thesis titled "Mediation and Dynamics in the Experience of Narrative Fiction", which was concerned with the affective and cognitive aspects of reading fiction. He joined Middlesex University in 2015, having previously taught at Royal Holloway College and the University of Westminster.

Teaching

Adam is a Programme Leader for MA Novel Writing (Distance Education), and  teaches on BA Creative Writing and Journalism. He also supervises PhD students.