On 7 January, Professor John Burnside appeared on BBC Radio Scotland’s Book Café to discuss his 2013 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award and his new collection of short stories, Something Like Happy. On 18 January, Professor Burnside also discussed and read from Something Like Happy on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. Following this, Professor Burnside was a speaker at the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference at Jaipur Literature Festival, which was held from 24–28 January, and where he took part in two events: a session on A Lie About My Father on 25 January; and on 26 January, a discussion of the subject of ‘Censorship Today’ with Basharat Peer, John Kampfner, Shoma Chaudhury, Orlando Figes and Timothy Garton Ash.

On 21 January, Professor Don Paterson was interviewed by the psychoanalyst and critic Adam Phillips at the Lutyens & Rubinstein Bookshop in London. On 31 January Professor Paterson took part in ‘An Evening with Don Paterson’ at Queen Elizabeth’s Academy in Crediton, Devon, and on 14 February he will be giving a pre-concert talk on love poetry prior to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s St Valentine’s Day Concert at City Halls, Glasgow.

Professor Nicholas Roe gave a talk on ‘John Keats. A New Life’ at the Wordsworth Trust’s Literature and Arts Festival in Grasmere on 25 January. He will also be speaking on Wordsworth and Keats at the Centre for Studies in Romantic Literature Annual Conference on Friday 1 February and Saturday 2 February 2013, at Presidency University, Kolkata, India.

Jacob Polley appeared on BBC Radio 3's The Verb on 1 February, talking about ballads and reading poems from his collection The Havocs. On 3 February, BBC Radio 4's Pick of the Week featured one of Jacob's poems from The Verb, and Jacob's poetry will also appear on Radio 4's Poetry Please.

Congratulations to Dr Robert Wooldridge, who obtained his PhD in Creative Writing with ‘Brotherhood: A Novel’ and the critical thesis ‘Shepherds on Skates: Canadian Hockey Fiction as a Version of Pastoral’.

Congratulations also to Dr Verita Sriratana, who obtained her PhD with the thesis ‘“Making Room” for One’s Own: Virginia Woolf and Technology of Place’. Verita is now a special lecturer at the Department of English, Chulalongkorn University, where she is teaching Modernist Literature and Indian Literature in English. From February onwards, she will be working towards a monograph on Slovak writer Bo¿ena Slancíková (Timrava) and Virginia Woolf as pioneers of feminist modernism. This project is funded by the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic and carried out in collaboration with the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Slovak Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. Verita will return and resume her position at the Department of English, Chulalongkorn University, after this postdoctoral research.

Claudia Daventry has some of her work published in the new Island Review, which launches on 11 February, and has T. S. Eliot Prize winner Jen Hadfield as its poetry editor.

Anna McFarlane will be attending a winter school run by the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities (IASH) in association with Bern University. The school takes place in Munchenwiler, Switzerland, 10–16 February, and the topic is ‘Timing Transformations’.

Jessica Volz has been invited to give a paper at the ‘Pride and Prejudice: Celebrating 200 years of Austen's best-loved novel’ conference at Cambridge in June 2013. She has also joined the OECD’s Wikiprogress team as a Communications Advisor (volunteer).