Dr Kim Wiltshire
Reader in Creative Writing
English & Creative Arts
Department: English & Creative Arts
Email address: [email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3052-5313
Reading has always been my safe space. Exploring new worlds is exciting: going round London with Paddington; falling down the rabbit hole with Alice; staying at the Dewdrop Inn. One day, I began inventing my own worlds, creating characters, writing stories – but writers then didn't look like me. Writers weren't working class and often weren't girls! By doing an MA in Creative Writing and learning, through creative process, how to BE a writer, I gained confidence and a mindset that means my writing is central to my life; it’s not just about waiting for the Muse, it’s about doing the hard work too!
Profile
Biography
Dr Kim Wiltshire is an academic, scriptwriter and short fiction writer, with much of her creative work being political, issue-based or exploring health and well-being. Plays include: Polarised (2004 – Burnley Youth Theatre), about the 2001 race riots (later adapted as a film for schools); The Loser (2009) for Scenepool at Camden People’s Theatre; Sing When You’re Winning (2010) for Bolton Octagon; Joy With Child (2010) for Organised Chaos in Manchester (this play was shortlisted for the 2009 Bruntwood Prize); Triple The Price Of Fruitcake as part of the Come Closer event at the Royal Exchange (2015). Short films include Living To Die for Lets Go Global/Mothers Against Violence and Transitions for Lime and the CF Unit. In 2013 she was a curator and writer for two of the Alligator Club productions, Blackout at The Dukes in Lancaster and Pages From My Songbook at The Royal Exchange. In 2014, supported by Bolton Octagon and Arts Council England, she toured Project XXX, a multimedia play, which led to Kim forming the Laid Bare Theatre Project (LBTP). In Autumn 2017 her new piece, The Value of Nothing, directed by Joyce Branagh, was produced by LBTP and toured the North West and the Midlands. Both plays have been published by Aurora Metro.
In December 2015 her book, Writing For Theatre: Creative and Critical Approaches, was published by Palgrave Macmillan, and in September 2018 the book she has co-edited with Billy Cowan, Scenes from the Revolution, was published by Edge Hill University Press and Pluto Press.
She is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, is on the HE board of NAWE and the editorial review board for Journal of Applied Arts and Health. Between 2022-2023 she was a British Academy Innovation Fellow exploring embedding arts into healthcare settings and during 2023-2024 she ran Home from Home, an AHRC funded practice research project exploring what the concept of home means to patients and staff in intermediate care units in Manchester, resulting in a touring exhibition, a poetry pamphlet and a verbatim poem.
Kim is a Reader and is Programme Leader for the BA Creative Writing and she is the Chair of the Arts and Humanities Ethics Committee.
Research Interests
Kim convenes the Fiction Writer’s Network, a research group of staff and writers from the North West, and co-leads the Practice Research group with Dr Chris Green. She is also a member of the European Network for Short Fiction.
Her research interests focus on creative writing, theatre work and co-creation with a health or social justice focus.
Teaching
Kim teaches script writing in all its forms and places employability for writers and those in the creative industries centrally to all her teaching.
Kim has been central to the revalidation and redesign of both the BA and the MA in creative writing.