Elizabeth K Reeder writes novels, essays, and stories. She also writes for the radio. Her first novel, Ramshackle was shortlisted for a number of awards including a Saltire Literary award (2013). Her second novel, Fremont, a story of ill-starred fairytale romance full of prejudice and desire, garnered great reviews, and re-jigs notions of home, identity and citizenship. An Archive of Happiness, a novel, published by Penned in the Margins (September 2020), was long-listed for the Highland Book Prize. It is set in the Scottish Highlands over the course of a summer solstice and places us with a normal, fractured family on a day that will force them to redraw traditional bonds of family. microbursts, a collection of lyric and inter-medial essays about the places between life and death, memoir and poetry - a collaborative work between herself and the artist Amanda Thomson – was published in 2021 as part of Prototype’s interdisciplinary strand. Reeder is a MacDowell Fellow.

Reeder’s interest in the essay (in particular in experimental, hybrid forms) has developed from a desire to write so that language, form and structure embed knowledge in a way that can be ‘read’ like poetry and art with a high level of complexity and intentional ambiguity. Reeder curated a series of conversations around essaying in the UK with Max Porter (editor with Granta and author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers); Jacques Testard (Managing director of Fitzcarraldo Editions); Carol Mavor (writer and artist-historian). This can be found here: Digressions: On Essaying in the UK.

Reeder holds a doctorate in English Literature/Creative Writing and is a senior lecturer Creative Writing at University of Glasgow. She organises and is invited to run workshops, seminars and talks on a range of subjects, including her own books and processes; the essay; exuberant creative failure; giving and receiving feedback, and on subjects she explores in her texts such as: illness, grief, archives (especially difficult, elusive archives), family, technological and imagined futures, narrative structure and many others. She loves chairing events and has interviewed people like Annie Ernaux, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Kelly Link, and Teju Cole.

In 2021/22 Reeder is also an Endangered Landscapes Artists in Residence for Cairngorms Connect with Robbie Synge (dancer, choreographer, filmmaker) and Dr Amanda Thomson (artist and writer, author of A Scots Dictionary of Nature and the upcoming, Be/longing (Canongate, autumn 2022)

Reeder co-runs #DeathWrites with Dr Naomi Richards and Amy Shea. They co-lead on a UofG Arts Lab and run a RSE funded network (Jan22-Jan24), COVID 19 as Catalyst for Writing and Discussing Death, Dying and Grief through Objects, Diaries and Collective Archives, which will support 30 Scottish writers to produce diverse work exploring death, dying and grief.

You can find out more at elizabethkreeder.com

She’s on twitter: @ekreeder / instagram: @ekreeder26

Elizabeth's research and writing interests include: 

Genres/Forms:
Contemporary Fiction
The Novel
Experimental and Hybrid Forms
Inter-medial and Cross-Genre Writing
The Expanded Essay
Memoir
Narrative Non-Fiction
Technological and Imagined Futures
Speculative fiction

Subjects:
Maps and Archives, especially experimental and impossible cartographies and collections
Family, especially those made and chosen
Identity
Illness, Death, Dying and Grief
Mental Health
Home and what we Build
Practice As Research
Exuberant, Creative Failure
Giving and Receiving Feedback

List by: Type | Date

Current - Royal Society of Edinburgh Network Grant: COVID 19 as Catalyst for Writing and Discussing Death, Dying and Grief through Objects, Diaries and Collective Archives £19,747.81

2018-present – Reading and Writing Death and Dying, an Arts Lab Theme and now Lab.  Co-led with Dr Naomi Richards (End of Life Studies) and Amy Shea (Doctoral Student)

2017/18  Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Funding, ‘On Genre-Bending Essaying: Catalyst Conversations and Workshops on the Potential Impact of Experimental and Hybrid Writing in Scotland’, £9994.60

2016/17  Scottish Graduate School of the Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) Performance and Writing –Organized with Carl Lavery, Theatre Studies, University of Glasgow, Maria Fusco, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh College of Art & Ross Birrell - GSA, £2500 (CI).

2016  SGSAH Art Writing – Four days of workshopping with colleagues from ECA (Neil Mullholland), GSA (Laura Edbrook) and Strathclyde (David Kinloch) -£2500 (CI).

2015-2017  Sited +.  Funded by Creative Scotland (£5,000), brought on as an independent adviser, because of her work with giving and receiving feedback and reputation for working across artforms effectively.  She wrote the Voices Study part of the Sited + report that was informed by a series of workshops held across Scotland makers of Sited Work and also a symposium.  The final report goes to Creative Scotland and other key bodies and will impact the policy and funding around Sited+ working in Scotland. 

2015   “All in A Fankle: A Workshopping of Exuberant Failure”, £1989 (PI), part of the Being Human Festival funding by AHRC and the British Council, November 2015 (workshops run with Rachel McCrum)

2014  Animating the Archive, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, July (supported by Ontario Arts Council (CAN$10,000 & Carnegie Trust £1998 + School £900), which led to robust collaborations, an exhibition and exhibition catalogue (2015), and kickstarted on ongoing interest in radical archiving. 

2013  Attentive Writers: Healthcare, Authorship and Authority, Wellcome Trust, £5000 (Co-Investigator), May-September 2013

2010  Creative Writing at University of Glasgow 15^th Anniversary Celebrations, £5020 total:  Chancellor’s Award £3750. £1270 Marketing.

Current Doctoral Students:

Clarkson, Amy – SGSAH – her practice-research explores creative interpretations of rewilding place.

Moth Adams, Gaar – Guest Privileges

Dunlop, Kirsty – conduction practice-based research into interactive fiction, glitch and emergent essaying.

Neuwirth, Christina – SGSAH Funded, Women of Words with University of Stirling and Scottish Book Trust

Deerwater, Michael - Beyond the Anthropocene

Junggeburth, Loll - Archiving the Human and Planetary Body in Decline

Skeete, Isana Ana Leah - Queer Characters of Colour in High Fantasy

Foulkes, Carrie - Renunciation Exercises: An interdisciplinary research project exploring narratives of illness and bereavement

Jennett, Meagan - Researching links between Appalachia and Scotland.

Please see the students' biographies for more information about their writing and research.

Completed Doctoral Students

Haynes, Laura – College of Arts Scholarship The Quick: Autotheory and Radical Intimacy in the Means and Production of Art and its Discourses

Shirreffs, Gillian - An exploration of the relationship between object and illness by means of a novel, Brodie, and a collection of essays and images entitled, Subject-Verb-Object.

Shea, Amy - Not All Deaths Are Created Equal: Essays on the Intersection of Death, Homelessness, and Inequality

Gales, Sally - iNSiDE, a Novel; Dead Spaces: An Invitation to See the Forgotten, a Series of Essays Renelle, Tawnya: Experiencing the Experiment of Creative Writing: A Hybrid Textbook

Pearce, Naomi - SGSAH funded, with Edinburgh College of Art; Every Contact Leaves A Trace: A Forensic Feminist Investigation into Women Administrators, Gentrification and the Artist Studio

Spoto, Angela - College of Arts Scholarship The Grief Nurse, a novel, and Asterisms, lyrical essays: Creative Questionings of Grief

Becherer, Laura – And I Have Touched the Sky and essays; also co-author of A Drink of One’s Own (Freight, 2017)

Defne Cizakca

Brown, Carly - Monticello Fellowship (2016) 2013 Scottish National Poetry Slam winner.

Kolovou, Ioulia – College of Arts Scholarship. Book: Anna Komnene and the Alexiad: The Byzantine Princess and the First Crusade Twitter: @driouliakolovou

Guthrie, Laura - author of Anna (Cranachan Publishing, 2020)

Strachan, Zoe

Hehir, Sylvia – 2013 Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award; shortlisted for the Caledonian Novel Award. Published novels, Sea Change (Stone Cold Fox Press, 2019) and Deleted (Garmoran Publishing, 2020) twitter: @shehir853

Garcia Rangel, Shere - Lecturer at Falmouth and host of the brilliant On the Hill podcast. Twitter: @Sherecita

Benning, Sheri – The Season’s Vagrant (Carcanet); Thin Moon Psalm (Brick Books)

McHarge, Caitlyn (MFA)

Andrews, Debbie – AHRC Scholar. Novel: Walking the Lights, Freight 2016, which was runner up for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize 2016

Strang, Em - Stone (Atlantic Press, 2016) & Bird-Woman (Shearsman, 2016). Horse-man (Shearsman, 2019) 2014 Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award; Winner of the Saltire Award for Poetry (2017)

Ilowska, Izabela

Guest, Graham

Crum, Ailsa

Hamilton, Anne Twitter: @AnneHamilton7

DiMario, Maria

Maftei, Micaela – Books: The Reach of A Root collaborative stories with Laura Tansley (Vagabond Voices, 2019); The Fiction of Autobiography: Reading and Writing Identity (Bloomsbury, 2013); co-editor Writing Creative Non-Fiction: Determining Form (Glyphi, 2015)

Tansley, Laura – Books: The Reach of A Root collaborative stories with Micaela Maftei (Vagabond Voices, 2019); co-editor Writing Creative Non-Fiction: Determining Form (Glyphi, 2015)

• Deerwater, Michael
  Beyond the Anthropocene

Dr Elizabeth Reeder has designed and implemented a number of creative writing courses for the Creative Writing MLitt, MFA and DFA programmes at University of Glasgow including:

• Craft and Experimentation
• Practical Pedagogy
• The original Creative Writing Practice as Research Course, which examines how thinkers who are primarily makers can approach processes of practice, research and excellence in the making of primary creative works and can hone their ability to create cultural and critical frames for their work and the work of others
• Cross-Discipline Fiction Workshop
• Hybrid Forms (with Colin Herd, Honours Course)
• The Art of Genre-Bending Essaying (an inter-institutional course, a core course for Glasgow School of Arts Art Writing MLitt, since 2018)
• Reading and Writing Death and Dying (designed with Amy Shea)

Reeder designed and taught on the inaugural Creative Writing MLitt by distance learning, which she convened for five years, 2008-2013, and for many years she designed the Creative Writing VLE courses to support campus-based students. She also teaches creative writing workshops at all levels.

She has convened the CW MLitt, was CW PGR Convenor for six years, CW UG Convenor for two, and is currently CW PGT Distance Learning Convenor.

Creative Awards / Writing Residences

2015 - MacDowell Artists Colony Fellow, with a residency April / May 2015

2014 - PAL Labs Residential Residency, Cove Park, September 2014

2014 - Invited Artist, Animating the Archive, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, July (supported by Ontario Arts Council (CAN$10,000 & Carnegie Trust £1998 & University of Glasgow £800), which led to an exhibition and exhibition catalogue. 

2013 - Residency at An Tobar Arts Centre, Mull, December linked to the production of a response to the Zembla exhibition, and including a public reading and talk on hybrid and experimental writing

2013 - Robert Louis Stevenson Fellow, funded by Scottish Book Trust/ Creative Scotland, held in Hotel Chevillon, Grez Sur Loing, France (June/July)

2012 - Ten day residency at Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist, to work in collaboration with the artist, Amanda Thomson

2012/13 - Ramshackle, shortlisted for the 2012 Saltire First Book of the Year, the 2013 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Best First Book of the Year Award, Anobii book prize, and long-listed for the Authors’ Club Best First Book Award (2013)              

2006 - Scottish Arts Council (SAC) Bursary, £9000

2005 - SAC Professional Development Grant, £1000

2005 - Glasgow University Research Support Award, £500

2002 - Scottish Arts Council Bursary to run in conjunction with the Scottish Arts Council / Glasgow City Council Writing Fellowship for the North East of Glasgow (March 2002-March 2004), £15,000 bursary over two years

2002 - Awarded place on BBC Radio Writers’ Lab

2001 - Scottish Arts Council Bursary, £3000

1998 - ‘Crosswords’ shortlisted for The Macallan /Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition