East Anglian Writers

Andrew Cowan Speaker Event - 15th June 2005

Starting the evening with readings from his latest novel, What I Know (Sceptre 2005), Andrew Cowan then gave a fascinating insight into his, perhaps unique, writing technique. He writes with deliberate, and sometimes debilitating, slowness; working on one sentence at a time, reworking it until it both fits the rhythm of the previous lines and works in its own right. Although this can be a painful process, it is the source of the distinctive cadence of his work. Interestingly, it is not until the work is finished that he begins to feel the emotional impact of what has been written, not until the technical challenges of the ‘daily encounters with failure’ have been overcome.

When Andrew graduated from the UEA’s creative writing MA programme, in 1985, he was dissatisfied and unhappy to such an extent that he was unable to write for next two years. He felt that the course had proven to him that he wasn’t a writer and felt he had drifted through the course. It was only in a tutorial with Angela Carter that he received the advice that has been a cornerstone to his writing success, ‘write about what you know’. He was haunted by his ambition to write, and began a long six-year journey to create his debut novel, Pig, which was long-listed for the Booker.

After his next two novels, Common Ground and Crustaceans, he was appointed twice as the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at UEA. This placed him in the right place at the right time to hear about the vacancy for Senior Lecturer on the creative writing programmes when it was announced. Although he never intended to return to the course as a tutor, he was glad to get the appointment, especially with assurances that he would still have the time to write.

Candidly, Andrew revealed the process of change that the creative writing programmes is undergoing. The creative writing minor for BA students is undergoing a comprehensive rethink, from recruitment procedures for tutors to marking criteria. This has been partly driven from student dissatisfaction, more acutely voiced now that students contribute towards the cost of their education through top-up fees.

With regards teaching the MA at UEA, Andrew was adamant that it was ‘better than he had dreamed it would be’ and a joy. The secret to the course, he feels, is the accelerated development that the intensive programme offers, as well as a co-operative and supportive environment where students help each other perhaps as much as the tutors do.

He described the MA as ‘a once in a life time experience’ that for many of its students, most of them in their thirties, offers a last chance to prove to themselves whether to be writers or not. Many of the students do not go on to be published but, he hopes, they graduate to be better writers, and perhaps more importantly, better readers.

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This event was reported by Benjamin Scott for East Anglian Writers. We are very grateful to Andrew Cowan for speaking to us, and thankful to the New Writing Partnership for enabling us to use the New Museum of Contemporary Art as a venue for our event.

To join the East Anglian Writers, or to find out more about our events, please e-mail Chair@eastanglianwriters.org.uk