Dr Linda Anderson

National Teaching Fellow 2007 As Reader in Creative Writing, Linda Anderson has made an outstanding contribution to the curriculum at the Open University; by developing undergraduate teaching in Creative Writing in a distance teaching context she has made a major contribution to the teaching of the subject nationally. The challenge that faced Linda and her team in 2002 was to adapt the OU's distinctive model of open learning taught at a distance to Creative Writing, then an entirely new subject for the institution. The course has been a resounding success, attracting an average of 2000 students each presentation and achieving the highest retention rate of any Level 2 course in the Arts faculty. The course workbook, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings, which Linda co-authored and edited, has been co-published with Routledge. It has been adopted by other universities and enjoyed worldwide sales. At Lancaster University she developed the first computer-mediated postgraduate course in Creative Writing in the UK. Throughout her career Linda has carried out research into the teaching of Creative Writing, and has been at the forefront in the use of new technology in teaching. She has taught many writers who have gone on to be published during or shortly after their courses. She says: "My experience as both student and teacher has confirmed my faith in the workshop as the ideal way to develop writers. Writing is a solitary, difficult business but belonging to an active community of writers offers a benign mix of comradeship and competition. It gives writers structure, deadlines and audience, all the things that stop writing plans evaporating into daydreams." She is an award-winning novelist and writer of short stories, poetry, performance pieces and critical reviews. She has also worked as a producer and director for BBC Radio Drama. In 2008 she published Writing Fiction (Routledge) with co-author Derek Neale. "In Linda Anderson's novels and short stories the personal, social and political are inextricably linked. Her perspective is served by a playfully self-conscious use of language delivered with passionate force." The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol V, ed. Angela Bourke (Cork University Press, 2002).