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Ouistreham is a port, and home of the Riva Bella seaside area on the Normandy coast of Calvados in France. It has a population of a little over 9,300. It is bordered by the Canal de Caen à la Mer, which connects Caen city with the English Channel. In 2024, I focused on researching Ouistreham for literary and creative cultural connections after completing the Millbay Residency the year before. I am hoping the town will begin to reveal catalysts for a new piece of literary travel writing or a place-making meta-fiction along the lines of ‘Millbay & Mill Bay’. Residencies for Writers and Artists My first discovery was that the town, La Ville de Ouistreham Riva-Bella, had renovated a building and created La Maison des Artistes, specifically to host residencies for artists and writers. On contacting the director, I was very kindly invited to go along for a visit in November.   Here was a starting point around which to build a visit and fieldwork. Research Rewarded Then the firs

Caen and Ouistreham Group in WhatsApp Community Have you tried setting-up a WhatsApp Community, yet? If you have been using WhatsApp with work colleagues or with friends for a while, then it is easy to do. A WhatsApp Community is a dialogue space to share an interest. The Community can grow and so you can divide it into Groups. In October 2024 we started a WhatsApp Community called French Travel and Books , and designed a logo of open books in the colours of the French flag: WhatsApp Group Soon, we realised it was a broad topic and so began to create Groups within the Community to share news and ideas for regions and cities. The aim began to form that it would be a space for collecting favourite holiday reading for visitors to these places. I am interested in Ouistreham and Caen because I completed fieldwork in November 2024, and the WhatsApp Group ran live alongside the travel and my stay in the port town.  Fieldwork in Ouistreham During my fieldwork in the town I was drawn to the

Millbay, Saturday 3 August 2024 Samedi. A decade has passed since Sam Ferguson published his question* on the innovative story by André Gide, called, Paludes . In English that book title could be rendered as Swamps, or, Sourpool, perhaps. Plymouth's Sourpool is recorded in 1439 when the town's boundary was fixed during its incorporation as a Devon borough. The record reads ‘between the hill called Windy Ridge – by the bank of the Sourpool – against the north all the way to the great dyke otherwise called the great ditch’.  Damp, mossy, ferny, even swampy boundaries blurred the edges of the space we call Millbay today. Paludes occupies a critical point of experimentation in the trajectory of published diary-writing […] exploring the possible relationship of the diary with the literary œuvre, and its capacity for addressing philosophical and aesthetic questions. The pertinence of this experimentation to the modern field of life-writing makes this a suitable moment for anothe

 Literary Tourism Handbook RESEARCHING LITERARY TOURISM.  A Handbook for Students and Supervisors Editor: Dr. Jasna Potočnik Topler Authors: Dr. Jasna Potočnik Topler, Dr. Rita Baleiro,  Dr. Giovanni Capecchi, Dr. Charles Mansfield ISBN 978-961-286-877-2 Literary tourism is a field that is becoming increasingly interesting to students for numerous reasons. Research in this area has been on the rise for several years, yet researchers of literary tourism often find it difficult to connect with others who have researched in this subject. There are, however, some exceptions in this field. One is TULE (Centre for Literary Tourism - Il Centro per il Turismo Letterario at the Perugia Foreigners' University), which brings together literary tourism researchers from Europe. In the creation of this textbook, the editor, Dr. Jasna Potočnik Topler, who is also a TULE member, invited her TULE colleagues Dr. Rita Baleiro (University of Algarve, CiTUR), Giovanni Capecchi (Università per Stranieri

 The Writing Research Centre The Writing Research Centre was established in February 2024. The research laboratory brings published work into the university classroom, re-purposed for undergraduate learners and those embarking on dissertation or PhD study. It ensures that research-informed teaching is inclusive and innovative. Both the Office for Students in England, (OfS) and the team preparing for the Research Excellence Framework, REF 2029 are encouraging institutions to build a supportive research culture to generate intellectually stimulating resources and make them accessible for al l. Find Us on YouTube The public-facing view of The Writing Research Centre is through its YouTube playlist at   or scan the QR Code to find us on YouTube