The Book Project\u00a0is a hugely popular module with Creative Writing undergraduates at Kent. An intensive course run by Simon Smith, it gets students writing new work with ambitious scope, building up a body of pieces or a novel that acts not only as a portfolio but a finished, saleable product. Students visit the Poetry Library in London and look at artists\u2019 books in the Templeman. After a period of writing, planning and workshops, each student produces a finished book that is printed, glossily bound and ready for sale. A reading and launch is held. Participants get a true taste of the gigging writer\u2019s life: deadlines, jacket designs, nerves, a live audience, applause. Selling and signing books. Exhaustion and elation.<\/p>\n
What do they make of the process? I asked Joe Hill, whose experience with publishing his first poetry collection through the project may have given him the live reading bug. He found the module useful and informative. \u2018While it\u2019s been great on the creative writing side, it\u2019s been equally useful to know about self-publication and the like.\u2019 There\u2019s a distinct camaraderie to the Book Project too \u2013 the students are in this together, facing similar challenges rather than bowing their heads over solitary desks or fire-fighting those editorial deadlines alone. \u2018Like so many of the creative writing modules, you really get to know your fellow students well on a personal level.\u2019 And what about the launch itself? \u2018The reading was nerve-racking,\u2019 Hill admits, \u2018but really gratifying as a book-end (no pun intended) to the module.\u2019<\/p>\n