Sarah Burton Illustrator & Author

Sarah Burton currently teaches creative writing at Cambridge University's Institute for Continuing Education, on weekend courses, day schools, online courses and the International Summer Programme. Until 2017 she was Course Director of ICE's Master's programme in Creative Writing; she now convenes ICE's Writers' Retreats. She teaches fiction, non-fiction, writing for performance and writing for children and also writes in all these genres. With Jem Poster she also regularly runs courses for the Guardian Masterclass series and the Oxford Literary Festival. She is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge. Sarah's publications are diverse, including two critically acclaimed biographies, Impostors: Six Kinds of Liar (Penguin, 2000) and A Double Life: a Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb (Penguin, 2003; shortlisted for the Mind Book of the Year award); a children's book, The Miracle in Bethlehem: A Storyteller's Tale (Floris Books, 2008); a page-to-stage guide, How to Put on a Community Play (Aurora Metro Books, 2011) and a spoof, The Complete and Utter History of the World By Samuel Stewart, Aged 9 (Short Books, 2013). Her debut novel, The Strange Adventures of H, was published by Legend Press in 2020. Jem Poster is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. 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 volume III in the six-volume Oxford University Press Edward Thomas: Prose Writings (2018). He has won prizes in major poetry competitions and has been Programme Advisor to (and tutor on) the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education's MSt in Creative Writing; he is currently Director of ICE's International Summer Programme in Creative Writing. He is Director of Academic Programmes for the Oxford Literary Festival and, with Sarah Burton, a regular tutor in the Guardian Masterclass series.