Deadline Extended for Angela Carter Awards

Angela Carter Society Awards

The Angela Carter Society seeks to celebrate and promote the study and appreciation of the life and work of Angela Carter, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. The society aims to create an international community of Angela Carter scholars and passionate readers to share and discuss historic and contemporary developments in the field of Angela Carter studies. We have therefore initiated this prize to celebrate the best scholarly work being undertaken in the field. We are really keen to have submissions from early career researchers and postgraduates, as well as established academics.

This year, there are two separate prizes:

  1. Award for best Chapter/Journal Article – £50
  2. Student Essay Prize – £100

The prizes are for the best published chapter or peer-reviewed journal article published between 1 Jan 2019 – 31 Dec 2021

Applications are open to members of the Angela Carter Society only – more information on membership and how to join

Please apply via this online form, attaching a PDF of your submission

Key Dates

Deadline:  Extended to Friday 29 April

Shortlist announced: 1 June 2022

Prizes announced at ACS Annual Conference 2022, University of Angers, France, 22-24 June 2022

Angela Carter: A Radical Prescience? Symposium

Venue: Cloisters, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester
Date: Saturday 5 March 2022, 9am-6pm

 

Registration now open!

Tickets: £40 on campus / £30 online from https://store.chi.ac.uk/product-catalogue/sussex-centre-for-folklore/events

A conference to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Angela Carter, whose reputation as a leading British writer of fantastical literature remains undiminished three decades after her untimely passing. We will highlight, celebrate and interrogate Angela Carter’s legacy, wrestle with her angels and demons, and pickpocket im/pertinent answers to a wealth of ever-more timely questions.

 The Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction at the University of Chichester invites proposals for papers, creative writing readings, panel discussions and events for our forthcoming symposium, Angela Carter: A Radical Prescience?

The symposium will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Angela Carter, whose reputation as a leading British writer of fantastical literature remains undiminished three decades after her untimely passing. Its theme also reflects the new decolonial and multi-genre direction of the Centre. In face-to-face and online events, we will highlight, celebrate and interrogate Angela Carter’s legacy, wrestle with her angels and demons, and pickpocket im/pertinent answers to a wealth of questions including:

  • with its focus on world fairy tales, Japanese culture, Black and trans characters, de Sade, and its mercurial movement between fantasy, the Gothic, SF, poetry and journalism, how radical was Angela Carter’s work during her life, and now?
  • how might current queer, feminist, intersectional, modern Gothic, speculative fiction and decolonial studies scholars engage with her work?
  • how have new generations of Beyond Realist creative writers responded to Carter’s legacy – from capitalising on the subtle whiff of literary respectability she brought to these genres, to exploring and extending her transgressive reach?
  • how has Carter’s legacy been taken up beyond the literary world, in relation, for example, to art history, cinema and theatre?

Download the Angela Carter Programme PDF

Truly It Felt Like Year One: A Tour of Angela Carter’s 1960s Bristol

We’re excited to announce that Professor Marie Mulvey-Roberts and Dr Charlotte Crofts are collaborating with Dr Stephen Hunt on a tour of Angela Carter’s 1960s Bristol as part of Being Human Festival 2020, the UK’s only festival of the humanities.

Angela Carter, one of the twentieth-century’s most acclaimed novelists, came of age as a writer in 1960s Clifton, where she experienced life in post-war Bristol, looking at a horizon bombed-out and derelict, but also booming with reconstruction schemes. On this tour through Clifton and Hotwells, we will revisit the places and counterculture that inspired her writing, in a society undergoing transformation and renewal so profound, that she declared: “Truly, it felt like Year One.”

Join author Stephen Hunt, author of the recent Angela Carter’s Provincial Bohemia on a virtual tour of Angela Carter’s 1960s Bristol followed by Q&A with Marie Mulvey-Roberts and Charlotte Crofts (co-founders of the Angela Carter Society). The tour also draws on Dr Zoe Brennan’s (UWE Bristol) chapter ‘Angela Carter’s Bristol Trilogy: A Gothic Perspective on Bristol’s 1960s Counter Culture’ in Mulvey-Roberts (ed.) Literary Bristol: Writers and the City (Redcliffe Press, 2015)

How to Participate

The event will take place online as a webinar due to the pandemic. Once you register you will have access to the webinar link and a downloadable PDF of the map which you can use as a self-directed tour guide. We hope to run the event as a walking tour when all this blows over.

“Premonition of the imminent end of the world is always a shot in the arm for the arts; if the world has, in fact, just ended, what then?” (Angela Carter, “The Alchemy of the Word,” 1978).

Panelists

Dr Stephen Hunt (UWE Bristol) has a background in environmental humanities and is the author of Angela Carter’s Provincial Bohemia: The Counter Culture in 1960s and 1970s Bristol and Bath (Bristol Radical History Group, 2020). He is currently editing a collection on the Kurdish environmental movement. He is also a long-time member of the Bristol Radical History Group.

Professor Marie Mulvey-Roberts (UWE Bristol) is the editor of The Arts of Angela Carter: A Cabinet of Curiosities (MUP, 2019) and co-editor with Charlotte Crofts of the forthcoming Angela Carter’s Pyrotechnics (Bloomsbury 2020). She co-curated the exhibition Strange Worlds: The Vision of Angela Carter at the Royal West of England Academy and co-produced performances of two musical adaptations from The Bloody Chamber, which she helped commission. The book is also the focus of a Massolit film she made on Angela Carter for schools. She started up the Get Angela Carter website to celebrate Angela Carter’s Bristol connections with Charlotte Crofts.

Dr Charlotte Crofts (UWE Bristol) is Associate Professor in Filmmaking at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol, UK), a filmmaker and creative producer. Her PhD was on Angela Carter’s writing for radio, film and television (since published as Anagrams of Desire by MUP, 2003) and she has also published on Angela Carter’s Japanese writings in Rebecca Munford (ed.) Re-Visiting Angela Carter (Palgrave, 2006). As well as co-editing Pyrotechnics (with Marie Mulvey-Roberts) she is also co-editing a special issue of Contemporary Women’s Writing (OUP) on Angel Carter and Japan with Professor Natsumi Ikoma and she has a feature film adaptation of Angela Carter’s ‘Flesh and the Mirror’ in development with BFI.

Acknowledgments

This event and accompanying map is funded by UWE Bristol, in partnership with Being Human Festival. The map was devised by Hunt, Crofts and Mulvey-Roberts and designed by Richard Grove, in partnership with Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol ArchiveBristol Know Your PlaceUWE Regional History CentreBristol Festival of Ideas and Bristol Cultural Development Partnership. Technical support is provided by the Digital Cultures Research Centre.

The Angela Carter Society seeks to celebrate and promote the study and appreciation of the life and work of Angela Carter, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. This society aims to create an international community of Angela Carter scholars and passionate readers to share and discuss historic and contemporary developments in the field of Angela Carter studies. The society was co-founded by Crofts, Mulvey-Roberts and Caleb Ferrari (née Sivyer).

The Bristol Radical History Group was founded in 2006 and organises events across Bristol and the South West including talks, film screenings, archive days, walks, historical recreations, gigs and fireside storytelling, and have published over 50 pamphlets and books with the aim to open up some of the ‘hidden’ history of Bristol and the West Country to public scrutiny and challenge some commonly held ideas about historical events. The BRHG approaches this history from ‘below’ by examining the actions and perspectives of those involved rather than the views of the contemporary establishment histories.

Winners of the 2020 Angela Carter Society Award announced!

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 Angela Carter Society Awards, which were revealed at the inaugural Angela Carter Society Conference 2020, in Lausanne, Switzerland on 8 Oct.

Best Chapter/Journal Article – Winner

Gina Wisker (2019) ‘Desire, disgust and dead women: Angela Carter’s rewriting women’s fatal scripts from Poe and Lovecraft’, in Marie Mulvey-Roberts (ed), The Arts of Angela Carter: A Cabinet of Curiosities (MUP)

 Best Chapter/Journal Article – Special Mention

Caleb Sivyer (2019) ‘“I resented it, it fascinated me”: Carer’s ambivalent cinematic fiction and the problem of proximity’, in Marie Mulvey-Roberts (ed), The Arts of Angela Carter: A Cabinet of Curiosities (MUP)

Best Student Essay – Winner

Alex Griffiths, “Narrative Topologies: The Assemblage of Desire in Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Read more about the winners here.

The call for next awards is now live here.

Benefits of Angela Carter Membership

As a member of the Angela Carter Society you will receive the following benefits:

  • Receipt of the Angela Carter Society annual newsletter and regular updates;
  • Exclusive membership of The Angela Carter Society Jiscmail Discussion Group;
  • Presenting your research at the annual conference (held in June);
  • Eligibility to apply for one of the Angela Carter Society Awards (presented at the Annual Conference).

Membership to this scholarly society is by subscription. You can join via this link, or click on the relevant membership rate in the list below. The membership year runs from 1 September to 31 August; the annual fees are as follows:

£20 (full-time waged)
£15 (part-time waged)
£10 (students and unwaged)

Renewals are due on 1 September each year. For any member joining in the last two months of the academic year (July/Aug) – payment will include the following year.

By joining you are supporting the Angela Carter Society Annual Conference and Awards.

Angela Carter Society Conference to Go Ahead

We’ve been in touch with the conference organisers who are exploring how the conference can go ahead:

“It will come as no surprise to you that the situation in Europe is very uncertain : Switzerland is slowly deconfining, but UNIL is still in lockdown until further notice, and it’s hard to tell how things are going to evolve in the next few months.

In agreement with the Angela Carter Society co-founders, and provided a second wave of Covid-19 doesn’t hit us in September, we have decided to maintain the conference and organise it in mixed live and Zoom format.”

More details will be available on our website and the conference website as soon as the programme and registration goes live. For more information please contact the Conference Organisers.

Angela Carter Society Membership opens 1 Sept

SAVE THE DATE: The Angela Carter Society annual membership will be opening soon and you will be able to join from 1 Sept. As a member of the Angela Carter Society you will receive the following benefits:

  • Receipt of the Angela Carter Society annual newsletter and regular updates;
  • Exclusive membership of The Angela Carter Society Jiscmail Discussion Group;
  • Presenting your research at the annual conference (held in June);
  • Eligibility to apply for one of the Angela Carter Society Awards (presented at the Annual Conference).

The membership year runs from 1 September to 31 August.

The fee for 2018-19 is:

£20 (full-time waged)
£15 (part-time waged)
£10 (students and unwaged)

Renewals are due on 1 September each year. For any member joining in the last two months of the academic year (July/Aug) – payment will include the following year.

By joining you are supporting the Angela Carter Society Annual Conference and prize.