The Creative Writing team in the School of English has pioneered a new initiative, the first of its kind in the UK, to offer Creative Writing students the opportunity to undertake a writing exchange with a Russian institution. The relationship with the Gorky Institute in Moscow has grown and developed over the last few months and it is hoped it will be the first of many such exchanges.
The exchange, which took place over the last few weeks of September, welcomed Russian students to the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus before taking them to the university’s Centre in Paris. The visit included master classes in poetry and fiction from award-winning British and Russian authors. The trip to Paris also included a visit to the Festival des Écrivains du Monde, an international literary festival in Paris, which brought together over thirty world-renowned authors, including Salman Rushdie, Catherine Millet and John Banville.
Our students have now returned from Moscow leg of the exchange, where they met luminaries from the buzzing local literary scene, watched Chekhov in Russian and visited Tolstoy’s estate outside of Moscow. There are plans for ongoing creative collaborations between the two sets of students.
The exchange was designed to give students from both institutions an opportunity to experience the way creative writing is approached in another country, as well as to encounter fellow students and authors from different cultures. The exchange has been described by students taking part as ‘a source of inspiration’ with the opportunity to be in contact with poets and novelists from different cultures as a way of ‘broadening literary horizons’.
Joanna Maskens, one of the University of Kent Students who took part in the exchange, said: ‘I have been completely blown away by the Russian Creative Writing Exchange Program. I am so grateful to have been treated to a incredible, jam-packed schedule – a tour around the British Library, a visit to Faber and Faber publishers and a chat with a literary agent; touring the backstreets of Paris steeped in literary history then on to readings by writers as acclaimed as Salman Rushdie at the Columbian World Literary Festival; and a week-long stay in Moscow, where studying at the Gorky Institute and visiting Tolstoy’s estate.’
“The trip’s juxtaposition of English, French and Russian cultures has reminded me of the vast wealth of inspiration at our disposal and the uniqueness of everyone’s take on the world. I have met some incredible people and visited beautiful places, both of which have inspired me to read more diversely and to write with confidence and knowledge of contemporary issues.”
Alex Preston, Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, said: ‘This has been a life-changing experience for the students involved. The two weeks have been extraordinarily inspiring, as our ten students made their ways through literary Canterbury, London, Paris and Moscow. Russian literature features prominently on the reading lists of many of our Creative Writing modules here at Kent. To be able to take students to the source, to Tolstoy’s estate and the very desk upon which he wrote War and Peace, has been a remarkable gift. None of us will ever write the same, or read the same, again.’