Two Scottish academics will visit the University of Glasgow on 24 April 2007 to discuss writing that breaks conventional literary forms.

Professor Jane Stevenson, author of historical novels The Winter Queen and Empress of the Last Days, will co-present a talk with Peter Davidson, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Aberdeen University, to investigate indeterminate texts.

Professor Stevenson will discuss the borders between forms of writing conventionally thought of as biographical and fictional with particular reference to her forthcoming biography for the English c20 painter Edward Burra (Cape, 2007). She will also discuss historical truth and fiction in her novel Astraea which has been much admired for creating a fictional history which could have happened between the documented aspects of the life of the heroine.

Professor Davidson will consider the 'indeterminate text'. He will discuss how the response to an idea or a work or art could be a scholarly essay or a poem, but how it is also possible to allow the work itself to lead the writer into works without determined genre, combining elements of essay, cultural history, topography and memoir, as he did in his The Idea of North.

The talk forms part of a series of lectures organised by the University of Glasgow's Centre for Creative Writing. The talk will take place at 5.30pm on Tuesday 24 April in Seminar Room 2 of the Wolfson Medical Building. The event is free and open to the public.

Kate Richardson (K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk)

Journalists and photographers are invited to the event. If you wish to attend, or for more information, please contact the Kate Richardson in the University of Glasgow's Media Relations Office on 0141 330 3683 or email K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk

First published: 23 April 2007