The Creative Conversations Speaker series returns for its fifth year. All events are free and open to the public.
This series is sponsored by the Ferguson Bequest and programmed by Creative Writing at University of Glasgow.
- Books by featured authors will be for sale at the events (cash only) and in John Smiths bookshop.
- Follow the conversation on Twitter: @UofGWriting | #CreativeConversations
Creative Conversations: PM Freestone
Creative Conversations: PM Freestone
Creative Conversations College of Arts
Date: Monday 23 November 2020
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Venue: Zoom Event
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: P.M. Freestone
Website: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-conversations-pm-freestone-tickets-117973394599
P. M. Freestone spent her formative years in Australia, then worked or studied on every continent except Antarctica (there’s still time). Her debut novel, Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom is a YA secondary-world fantasy published by Scholastic in the UK and US in 2019, with the sequel Shadowscent: Crown of Smoke following in 2020.
A graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (University of California), Freestone’s short stories of imagined pasts and potential futures have appeared in various print and online venues including the MG and YA anthologies Things a Map Won’t Show You and Where the Shoreline Used to Be (Penguin). In 2016, she was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, and in 2018 she was one of the SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices.
Neither of Freestone’s parents finished high school, but they instilled a love of libraries during her early years. Unabashedly nerdy ever since, she’s collected a motley crew of university degrees, culminating in a PhD in infectious diseases and international development. Before she became a doctor of something philosophical, she was an archaeologist. This led to documenting long-abandoned villages beneath the stony gaze of Easter Island’s moai, wielding a machete through the Belizean rainforest to help map lost cities, and donning a lab coat in the UK to restore ancient Roman armor and treasures from Celtic burial hoards.
Though she’s set aside her trowel and theodolite, she remains intrigued with all things historical and speculative. These days, that curiosity is sated by travel and by her work as a writing consultant for universities around the world, where she gets to hear about all sorts of amazing research: from cutting-edge genetics to little known Renaissance poets. The rest of the time she resides in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her Irish partner, a rescued Romanian street dog who identifies as direwolf-corgi, and a menagerie of NASA-approved houseplants. She’s only ever met one cheese she didn’t like.
This is a zoom event. You will be sent a link to join the meeting once you book on eventbrite.
Creative Conversations is programmed by the University of Glasgow Creative Writing Programme and funded by the Ferguson Bequest. Professor Thomas Ferguson (1900-1977), Henry Mechan Chair of Public Health (1944-64), bequeathed his estate to the University, with the instruction that the money should be used to foster the social side of University life.