Clare Morgan is a writer, educator and literary critic. She is founder and director of Oxford University’s creative writing programme which has, in the eighteen years since its inception, come to be recognized as among the top creative writing programmes offered globally.  She is also a consultant, adviser and speaker on the role of the arts and humanities in influencing and enhancing the culture of private, public and social enterprises.

Clare’s latest collection of short stories is released September 22, 2022.

A collection of lyrical, evocative and searching stories, Scar Tissue unflinchingly explores the darker and more challenging aspects of emotional, sexual and familial relationships, while simultaneously celebrating the joys of being alive in an unfathomable world. 

Her novel, A Book for All and None (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best Novel award, and was described as ‘a spell-binding, effortlessly propulsive unity’ by the Independent; ‘written with eloquence and artistry’ by the Mail on Sunday; and ‘too tantalizing to resist’ by Time Out. She has published a collection of stories, An Affair of the Heart and her short fiction been widely anthologized, and has been commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 4.

Clare was commissioned by the global business consultancy leader, The Boston Consulting Group, to investigate the relation between poetry and business.  In addition to publishing the book based on her research, What Poetry Brings to Business  (University of Michigan Press), Clare ran a series of multi-language poetry-strategy workshops and presentations for global corporate companies in the US, UK, continental Europe and Japan.  Dana Gioia, former Chair of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, described What Poetry Brings to Business thus: “At last there is a book that explores the deep but unexpected connections between business and poetry. Clare Morgan demonstrates how the creative energy, emotional power and communicative complexity of poetry relate directly to the practical needs for innovation and problem solving that face business managers.’

Clare has recently been collaborating with BCG on further new developments of Poetry-in-Business with particular emphasis on “Thinking Beyond the Facts” and developing appropriate mindsets and thinking capabilities for leaders and executives in the 2020s.  This work has been featured in Fast Company Magazine

Re-published September 22, 2022 Each story in An Affair of the Heart questions the apparently romantic title through its exploration of the enigmatic state of mind known as love. Desire and identity; displacement – emotional and geographical; the relationship between ambition, circumstances and emotion; the often difficult co-existence of passion and intellect; these are the subjects of the fifteen fascinating narratives.

Men and women reckon the worth of relationships past and present, from steamy New Orleans to urbane Paris, from metropolitan Chelsea to the industrial valleys and rural hinterlands of Wales. Frank and delicate, revelatory and secret, Clare Morgan’s stories offer insights into human nature which are in turn punchily realistic and suggestively questioning.

Clare gained her MPhil and DPhil from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and an MA in Creative Writing from University of East Anglia, where she worked with Rose Tremain and Malcolm Bradbury. Her work was chosen to appear in the anthology Class Work: Best of the Past Twenty-five Years (ed. Bradbury & Tremain). She is a member of Oxford University’s English Faculty and a Fellow of Kellogg College, and has taught in Oxford since 1995, initially at Brasenose College and later at Christ Church. She is Director of the Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing, where she is convenor of a popular seminar series.

She has fulfilled a number of public roles in relation to her writing and teaching. She is former Chair of the Literature Bursaries Panel of the Arts Council of Wales, and Literary Mentor for Southern Arts and Literature Wales. She has been engaged as a literary assessor for publications funded by the Welsh Books Council. She is currently Academician, Folio Academy (the body responsible for first line selection of titles for the Folio Prize).

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