An Evening of Ghost Stories for Christmas

The recitation of ghost stories at Christmastime is a tradition made popular by Charles Dickens and M.R. James, but has far more ancient roots, tapping into the primal origins of story itself.

This entertaining evening will be led by our charismatic storyteller, Dr Kevan Manwaring (Arts University Bournemouth MA Creative Writing Programme Leader), who will adopt this Christmastime tradition with gusto.

Settle in, with mince pies and mulled wine, and allow your imagination to run free. Dr Manwaring will tell original tales inspired by landscapes he has visited – a lonely isle off of the Northern Irish coast; a creepy holloway in deepest Dorset – alongside some gathered in his collections from The History Press, Oxfordshire Folk Tales and Northamptonshire Folk Tales.

Dr Kevan Manwaring is Programme Leader for MA Creative Writing (online) and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth.

A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers 2022 finalist, his research focuses on fantasy and ecofiction. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Hawthornden, and the Eccles Centre for American Studies (British Library), plus an Honorary Associate of the Open University. He is the author of Writing Ecofiction: navigating the challenges of environmental narrative (Palgrave Macmillan), the interactive novel Hyperion, The Long Woman, Lost Islands, and editor of Heavy Weather: tempestuous tales of stranger climes (The British Library), as well as collections of folk tales for The History Press (Oxfordshire Folk Tales; Northamptonshire Folk Tales; Ballad Tales).

His audio dramas include Black Box and Sunkenkirk. He has contributed articles to peer-reviewed journals such as Writing in Practice, New Writing, TEXT, Axon, and Revenant. His first television appearance was performing live as a storyteller on BBC Breakfast TV (Roman Baths Special, 2000). Since then, he has been the academic consultant for The Secret Life of Books: Cider with Rosie (BBC Four), filmed in conversation with novelist Joanna Trollope (2015), and was interviewed on Antiques Road Trip (BBC One) by Mark Stacey in Slad about Laurie Lee (2016). In 2022 he participated in a BBC Radio 3 panel discussion about Vikings, and instigated a special feature on John Cowper Powys (both on Free Thinking). He is the convenor of Writing the Earth – a week-long programme of events using creativity to explore environmental issues in celebration of Earth Day.

Host or Publisher Arts University Bournemouth Innovation