Professor Jem Poster

Jem Poster worked as an archaeologist, surveying and excavating a range of sites on behalf of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, before taking up an administrative post with Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education in 1987. From 1993 to 2003 he was University Lecturer in Literature with Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education and a fellow of Kellogg College. From 2003 to 2012 he was Professor of Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, and is now Emeritus Professor. He is the author of two novels, Courting Shadows (Sceptre, 2002) and Rifling Paradise (Sceptre, 2006), as well as a collection of poetry, Brought to Light (Bloodaxe, 2001), and editor of a volume in the six-volume Oxford University Press Edward Thomas: Prose Writings (OUP, 2018). He has won prizes in major poetry competitions including first prize in both the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 1995 and the Peterloo Poets Open Poetry Competition in 2001. He has been Chair of the editorial board of Wales’s leading literary journal, New Welsh Review, and Programme Advisor to the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education’s MSt in Creative Writing; he is currently Director of its International Summer Programme in Creative Writing, and is an Affiliated Lecturer of the Institute. He is also Director of Academic Programmes for the Financial Times Oxford Literary Festival.