Staff Profile | English Literature, Language and Linguistics

Professor Alex Pheby

Professor of Creative Writing (Prose)

Address: Room 2.23 Percy Building
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics,
缅北禁地
缅北禁地 upon Tyne
NE1 7RU

Summary

Trained as an art historian, a critical theorist, and a writer, I use the techniques of surrealism, expressionism, symbolism, psychoanalysis and phenomenology to deconstruct literary attempts to manufacture reality. My work cuts across genre boundaries, exposing the underlying machinery by which realism hides its artificiality and its complicity in reifying the operations of personal, state, and corporate power.

As an educator, I aim to expand the field of possible writing, working with writers to develop their voices both inside and outside of accepted literary practice.

PhD supervisions:

I'm happy to supervise Creative Writing PhD projects in prose of any genre.

Prizes and awards:

Playthings

Shortlisted for the international Wellcome Book Prize 2016

Lucia

Winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019

Mordew

The Guardian Books of the Year 2020

Tor.com Books of the Year 2020

The i Books of the Year 2020

Locus Magazine Recommended Reading 2020

Waterstones Books of the Year 2020

Longlisted for the 2021 BSFA Awards

Longlisted for the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize

Nominated for the 2021 Locus Awards for Best Fantasy Novel

Nominated for the Grand Prix De L’Imaginaire 2023, première sélection

Nominated for the Prix Jacques Chambon 2023, deuxième sélection

Nominated for the Мир фантастики Fantasy Book of the Year 2023

Malarkoi

Longlisted for the 2022 BSFA Awards

Locus Magazine Recommended Reading 2022

Waterstones Books of the Year 2022

Tor.com Books of the Year 2023

Waterblack

Reactor Books of the Year 2025

Review 31 Books of the Year 2025

Locus Magazine Recommended Reading 2025

Reviews:

Waterblack

"As the long-awaited conclusion to the trilogy, Waterblack finishes on a high and serves as a satisfying end to the journey of the Nathan Treeves. It overcomes the likely pit-falls by grounding it’s strangeness in universal themes of trauma, abandonment, loyalty, and power. Pheby has executed this series with great skill and maturity, building to a climax that I believe will keep fans thinking long after they close the final page." – Turnaround

"In this formidable finale, Pheby has given this subgenre a master class in what it means to create and own a wholly original world without compromise." – Reactor

“Pheby at his most imaginative and peculiar best. Bursting with energy, the tension between the rational and irrational comes to a climactic, pyrotechnic, cinematic head. A magnificent and intellectual delight brimming with outlandish notions. He’s made me laugh, gasp, and hold back tears. What more could I want?” – Locus Magazine

"Pheby's poignant writing style is not for everyone; but those that appreciate the grim themes and elements of dark fantasy combined with strong philosophical ideas could find "Cities of the Weft" an epic fantasy to challenge the status quo, filled with highly detailed world-building and entirely original concepts." – Madison Daily Leader

"You will gasp and cheer and cry... I genuinely believe the “Cities of the Weft” is a masterpiece, a classic of the epic fantasy genre." – Ian Mond

"Pheby’s phenomenal command of narrative crafts not just a phenomenal book, but a phenomenal ending to his titanic, grotesque, epic trilogy… It’s exactly how The Weft Cycle should end: tangled, messy, grotesque, bizarre, and bittersweet. For all the chaos and lunacy unfolding in Waterblack, it’s the timing, pacing, control, and his insistence that things end the way they’re supposed to even if it’s not the way people might want them to that crafts a perfect ending. Waterblack is a thunderous conclusion to an epic weird fantasy that refuses to play by the genre’s rules, with Pheby crafting not just a fitting end to the Weft, but a satisfying one as well." – Ancillary Review of Books

“A monstrous achievement, as beautiful as it is disgusting, as funny as it is heartbreaking, Waterblack solidifies The Cities of the Weft as one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. Like Peake did with Gormenghast, Pheby unravels a thread of childlike wonder in his books, but never in the condescending, nostalgic way to which we as readers have become acclimatized. Rather, the Weft series commandeers the baser, far more intrinsic aspects of childhood--helplessness, confusion, terror, and most wonderfully, a view of a world so insane and multifaceted it seems beyond comprehension. Pheby doesn't so much excel at world building as exceed it, breaking every rule with almost manic enthusiasm. The universe is tenuous, volatile, a suggestion of the concrete built from a trillion trillion miniscule abstractions. These books are not for the faint of heart, in an existential sense; they will work to deconstruct a careful reader as much as they deconstruct themselves. Like Nathan, we will find ourselves both complicit in and crushed under the infinity of injustice, the inheritors of a world so huge and fucked-up and parasitized by ruthless necrotizing structures of power that there is absolutely nothing we can do but read on.” – Hiron Ennes

“Incredible drama played out without hyperbole despite being vast in scope and concept… brilliantly enacted and paced, imaginative yet also astutely relevant to our own current times… endlessly rewarding.” – Bookmunch

"For those readers open to ambitious, challenging novels full of big ideas, Waterblack will be greeted as a fitting conclusion to one of the landmark works of experimental fantasy of the twenty-first century, joining the likes of China Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy (2000-2004), Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris novels (2001-2009), Michael Cisco’s The Narrator (2010), and Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall (2024). It is a series that sets a new standard for what is possible in fantasy; and it is a series whose legacy will be determined as much by the authors who find the need to grapple with it in the future as by its reception in the here and now." – Strange Horizons

"The very definition of fantasy." – Ancillary Review of Books

"This is the best new fantasy I have read in a long time, with a wit and style so often missing from the genre." – Review 31

"I like to think about the trilogy as a single entity in terms of how it provokes and challenges the reader, for better or worse, to give their all to such a vast and formidable text." – Reactor

Malarkoi

“Another brilliant slice of literary fantasy.” – The Observer

“The sequel to Pheby’s universally acclaimed and monumental fantasy epic Mordew, this delves even deeper into the vividly realised world inhabited by assassins, demi-gods, occult weapons and the sinister Master and Mistress.” – Waterstones

“I cannot stress how much you should read this book...” – Death Sentence Podcast

“You’re going to have a blast with Malarkoi. It’s as playful – even more so – than Mordew. I shan’t say more other than that Pheby is knocking out one heck of a fantasy trilogy.” – Ian Mond

“Cities of the Weft has become the classic it deserved to be.” – Book Munch

“An unmitigated pleasure to read… it’s become abundantly clear that Pheby is producing something unusual, something original, something extraordinary with this trilogy.” – Locus Magazine

“It’s not just that it’s everything I wanted from a sequel; it’s that it somehow feels like more than I deserve. An absolute triumph.” – Infinite Speculation

“As unusual and ambitious an epic fantasy as its predecessor…the situations are grotesque and unrelentingly grim, creating the sense of being trapped in a nightmare… Pheby is an undoubted original, turning the standard tropes of modern fantasy into something much weirder and more disturbing.” – Lisa Tuttle, The Guardian

“[a]super-smart piece of literary fantasy.” – The Guardian

“Pheby again brings Dickensian sensibilities to bear in the novel’s tone, complex plot, and expansive cast. Readers will feel their alliances shifting as they’re faced with choices over whom to root for, with the most humane characters often being the nonhumans. The middle instalment of a trilogy, this sets things up nicely for the grand finale.” – Publishers Weekly

"Exhilarating. Pheby is nothing if not generous with ideas… [A]n unrestrained imaginative spectacle.” – New York Magazine

“I first came to Mordew knowing little about the book or the world or why Marlon James was calling it “the future of fantasy.” Now I’m leaving Malarkoi sated, with a full belly from the second installment of Pheby’s extraordinary creation. This is the best kind of fantasy fiction—the kind that invites the reader to flow with the narrative, and abandon rationale and reasoning in favor of the journey. Malarkoi is one brilliantly-polished facet of a singular gem—a recipe for wonder and unpredictability.” – Tor.com

"Čtení je jako horečnatý sen, ve kterém se pocit úžasu neustále střídá s pocitem hlubokého zneklidnění a strachu z neznámého… odměnou je naprosto pohlcující literární zážitek, který se vymyká všem žánrovým škatulkám…. Je to čirá, neředěná fantazie v té nejlepší možné podobě." – Gaming Professors

Mordew

“The future of fantasy starts here.’ – Marlon James

“The best start to a fantasy trilogy in the last decade.” – Locus Magazine

“A stunning success.” – The Guardian

“One thing that I was reading recently was this book that came out called Mordew. It’s this crazy literary fantasy that takes place in the walled-off city that I think is based loosely on Paris, and it takes places thousands of years in the future, and it’s fantasy and fantastical and philosophical and it’s got this weird kind of magic, and what really inspired me is at the end there’s this huge long glossary, almost a hundred pages of it, and [Pheby] goes into descriptions of all the terms in the world, and the way that he describes them is very, very funny, as well as informative, and as I’m reading this, I’m like, this is exactly how I want to do the help text, and the lore translations in the game as well, so – I kind of got a lot of inspiration from that.” – Koji Fox, Final Fantasy XVI

“Pheby channels an entire tradition of British fantasy including Peake, Miéville, and Moorcock to create a gruesome and fascinating world filled with talking dogs, boys born from mud, god-killing crusades, and much more. Pheby also shares this tradition’s tendency to endlessly subvert common fantasy tropes and surprise reader expectations. Highly recommended for those interested in sprawling, bizarre fantasy worlds that run counter to the post-Tolkien mode.” – Booklist (starred review)

“An incredible opening to an exciting new epic fantasy trilogy.” – Locus Magazine

“Mordew is a darkly brilliant novel, extraordinary, absorbing and dream-haunting... crammed with grotesque inventiveness. This is an outré book, often mannered and sometimes arch; but it is also oddly, stiffly, immensely vital – is indeed about vitality, in both its creative and its cancerous form. It’s an extravagant and often unnerving marvel.” – The Guardian

“Alex Pheby’s fourth novel is dizzying… his splicing of Dickensian social satire and rackety, steampunk fantasy is beguiling. The titular city is exuberantly realised, the sort of setting H.P. Lovecraft and Hogarth might cook up on a mescaline binge.” – The Spectator

“Pheby is an accomplished, skilled writer, and Mordew is an atmospheric, bleak fantasy… and may well prove to be a significant addition to the genre. Few writers have the courage to make these leaps between their works, and Pheby has shown just how rewarding such risks can be.” – The Irish Times

“There are books that from the moment you enter into their world, you know you are dealing with something special… Here is Fantasy with a profound sense of the uncanny, Fantasy unafraid to embrace the grotesque and the strange, Fantasy that pushes at the edges of its metafictional relationship to the reader. Mordew is set in a world so strange and compelling that it is impossible not to believe in it. It is populated by characters outlandish and grotesque, and their commitment to surviving the bizarreness of the world they find themselves in makes them a joy to follow. And it is all tied together by Pheby’s glorious prose, which somehow manages to mix gothic descriptions with wry understatement to wonderful effect.” – Fantasy Hive

“Alex Pheby’s fourth novel is a great read. Mordew is a novel for adult readers who remember the thrill of rushing home from junior-high school to dive back into the book that they’ve been lusting to return to all day while suffering at school. It is for readers who haven’t completely severed contact with their younger selves who often read just a couple more pages after bedtime under the covers by flashlight. Within the pages of Mordew, Pheby’s world reminds us that the best reading, the most satisfying and nutritious reading, expresses pure joy and invites unabashed abandonment in the invented world of the text and the characters and the circumstances that inform it.” – Book Munch

“There is so much to admire here. Amidst the multi-layered, crazed invention — expertly fashioned magic systems, a deeply embedded seam of spirituality, a lengthy and delightful ‘Interlude’ narrated by a talking dog — Pheby’s prose allows the hooked reader to progress at speed. Ending on a perfectly delivered cliff edge, Mordew is a dark wonder.” – Lunate

“What really sets Mordew apart from so many other works is the writing. World-building and the magic system (if it can be called that) are exemplary, but the prose in Mordew is so evocative that it borders on synesthetic. When Pheby writes rain, you can almost feel it pattering on your skin and drumming on your head. When it’s machinery, you’d swear you felt a rumble in the earth, perhaps heard the far-off squeak and clank of gears. There’s the magic he writes about, but then there’s the spell he weaves in the telling itself. This is literary, mature fantasy; it’s audacious and edgy, yet steeped in tradition, with a bleak and majestic beauty that’s all its own.” – Infinite Speculation

“Shades of Gormenghast... but with a wild magic all of its own.” -- The i

“Impressively ambitious… vividly imagined… [Mordew] takes the reader on a memorable journey, with unexpected twists.” – The Daily Express

“[Mordew] is weird and wonderful… bleak and beautiful… An extraordinarily vivid slice of world-building.” – The Sunday Express

“An emphatic, head-up-shoulders-back stride into the genre… Pheby infuses the pages with a crackling animating magic of his own.” – The Big Issue

“A blend of Great Expectations and Gormenghast, with a cliff-hanger ending that hints at a dynamic sequel.” – Literary Review

“At over 600 pages, including the glossary, Mordew could have been too much, so it is a testimony to Pheby’s control of his material that you finish desperate to read more. How lucky we are, then, that this is the first in a trilogy.” – The i

“Reading it becomes a need and a dread, a story you absolutely must finish to find out what terrible things will happen next, knowing that bad dreams will follow.” – Strange Horizons

“Magisterial... A maximalist triumph... Mordew reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s dictum, that '[t]here is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism'.” – Los Angeles Review of Books

“…oh my goodness, this novel. It is amazing. And that is not a thing I say lightly… it takes what we understand by fantasy at the moment and pushes it to a different level altogether.” – Interzone

“An assured exercise in the high style of fantasy, with lashings of magic, a dark, gothic mood, a vivid sense of place, plenty of sharply drawn characters and visceral detail, lots of pace, sharp dialogue and sparks of humour.” – The Times Literary Supplement

“This beautifully produced book is an absorbing and inventive addition to the fantasy genre.” – The Irish Examiner

“A mesmeric slice of gothic fantasy… An unforgettable literary experience.” –Waterstones.com

“Startling, baroque, sometimes revolting – but always amazing.” – Guardian Books of the Year

“As the nights start drawing in and frosts weave new chills into the evening air, what could be better than a descent into a catacombed city, full of unseen scuttling and theological travesties, where the frailties of human hopefulness are examined and writ large on an epic, sprawling scale? Tense and thrilling, and a fully immersive vision of decadence and decay.” – Eley Williams

“An original, unnerving and immersive depiction of dark travesty: a vicious, viscid phantasmagoria.” – Republic of Consciousness Prize

“One of the most darkly enjoyable fantasy novels I have read in ages; vast, gothic, Gormenghasty in the best way, and bursting with invention and joyous grotesquery.” – The Bookseller

“Pheby sharply observes the ways in which power creates, corrupts, and is amalgamated from ancestor to descendant. Readers who enjoy intricate worldbuilding and morally gray characters would do well to snap this up.” – Publishers Weekly

“Mordew is the beginning of a new trilogy that seems primed to be adored by fantasy readers the world over. There are sharp one-liners and moments of pure disgust and a talking dog and debts that must be repaid and an ending that had me wide-eyed in the best way possible. You should buy it.” – Pajiba

“A true one-of-a-kind neo-Dickensian modern fantasy.” – Foyles

“Mordew is a fascinating concept and a truly ambitious fantasy. It is not an easy or quick read, but it is worth investing the time and effort to unpick its challenging and complex nature.” – Grimdark Magazine

“Un petit bijou de dark fantasy.” – Un dernier livre avant la fin du monde

“Et ça marche, on lit ses 600 pages avec un vrai plaisir. Là encore grâce à la science du rythme d’Alex Pheby.” – La Viduité

“Pour avoir une idée de cet univers, de son atmosphère et de son ton, convoquez vos souvenirs d’orphelins des bas-fonds dickensiens, ajoutez un soupçon de démonologie à la Notre part de nuit de Mariana Enriquez et complétez avec un sens marqué des constructions complexes, des jeux de pistes et des dialogues avec la philosophie (à la Alan Moore). Voici un univers très sombre où la magie ne s’exerce qu’au prix des larmes enfantines, où Dieu se trouve littéralement à l’état de cadavre, où la puissance ne se leste d’aucune morale et où les bons finissent presque toujours mal. N’empêche, tout cela a bien beau incarner tout le contraire d’une carte postale envoyée depuis un royaume enchanté, il est impossible pour autant de lâcher ce fascinant bouquin.” – Les Libraires

"Un romanzo che piacerà soprattutto per il vago retrogusto di lurido che saprà lasciare sul palato dei lettori." – Style Magazine

"Alex Pheby l’auteur de ce roman gothique extraordinaire nous entraîne dans un imaginaire foisonnant et impressionnant." – Culture-Addict

"Mordie je zkrátka a dobře neuchopitelná. Je to dark steampunk fantasy, které se jen tak nenechá zaškatulkovat. Je to svět, který si pro nebohého Nathana připravil nejedno k.revsky hnusné púřekvapení. Je to svět sakra skutečný a uvěřitelný, kde moc hraje prim. A na slova o cti a slávě se opravdu nedá sázet." – Geek Cave

"Alex Pheby je obratný spisovatel, který za sebou má již nejedno dílo, ovšem Mordie je jeho první výpravou do hájemství fantastické literatury. Tohoto úkolu se ovšem zhošťuje na výbornou." – Fantasymag

"Tvůrce přišel s inovacemi, jaké by mě nikdy nenapadly, a jak jsou podány? V humusu je krása, v mrtvole vznešenost, v kanále vůně. Tak dokonale protimluvná, až vlastně harmonická fantasmagorie." – Gaming Professors

Lucia

“Pheby is a writer possessed of unusual - indeed, extraordinary - powers. His Lucia is a fully accomplished account of a troubled and troubling life.” – The Guardian

“Startlingly original... intensely moving... an ambitious and daring investigation of consciousness, agency, selfhood, mental disorder, medical callousness and misogyny.” – The Times Literary Supplement

“Pheby's Lucia is so skilfully written that it allows the reviewer the luxury of diving straight into the ideas he weaves together... a brilliantly crafted novel.” – The Lancet

“Tactile, penetrative and starkly disturbing.... a work of commendable literary merit” – Review31

“Exquisitely written.” – The Spectator

“Shocking, hilarious, heart-breaking, dark, and utterly, utterly brilliant.” – Turnaround

“Setting the standard not only for intellectually uncompromising fictional biography butalso for rigorously questioning narrative experiment.” – The Irish Times

“In its variety of narrative methods and sublime, descriptive language it is a really fine novel.” – The Dublin Review of Books

“A literary wonder... daring, irresistible... Pheby is a master.” – The Scottish Herald

“Grisly in subject matter, gorgeous in language, and distinctive in execution, Lucia is arguably among the best of this year’s experimental novels.” – Helsinki Review

“Lucia makes a new reading of the Joycean lore possible.” – Full Stop

“Madness, toy soldiers and tapeworms. Alex Pheby is not only a whizz at finding the tortured connections that underpin the Twentieth Century, its wars and its art, but his compassion for Lucia Joyce has an extraordinary effect: it speaks up for girls and women everywhere. Bravo.” – Lucy Ellmann

“An original, bravura turn.” – Globe and Mail

“Un retrato escalofriante y original de la vida de la hija de James Joyce.” – Clarín

Playthings

“If Playthings is a neuronovel then it's arguably the best neuronovel ever written, particularly in its depiction of memory and the instability of personality. But it transcends any such category and is simply a superb novel tout court, Kafkaesque in its nightmarish fluency and a powerful exposition of Kant's celebrated view that 'the madman is a waking dreamer.’” – The Literary Review

“Marvellously surprising and vivid, something new. Somehow inside the shape of an old story he traces fresh experiences as if for the first time. The detail is so sensuously precise. Impressed as I haven't been by a new novel for a while.” – The New York Times

“Bold... immersive... compassionate... [In Playthings], we are made to see a logic to Schreber's psychosis and an illogicality and madness in the actions of the doctors and people around him... It is this humanizing aspect of the novel which is most valuable; we are reminded of the immense tragedy of his experiences of illness, experiences that are too often removed from the context of life.” – The Times Literary Supplement

“A highly detailed, emotional plunge into the mind of a disturbed man... An intense, immersive reading experience that provides real insight into those afflicted with severe mental illness.” – Kirkus

“Throughout this compelling novel the space between reader and Schreber becomes a sombre reminder of how alone we all are.” – The Guardian

“A haunting new novel... [Pheby] doesn't merely relate Schreber's illness. He invites us to inhabit it - using prose that is both precise and beautiful. His disjointed prose conveys disordered thinking.” –The New Scientist

“Alex Pheby's novel Playthings, about one of Freud’s patients, takes us inside the experience of delusion, turning perception upside down and the results are darkly comical as well as tragic.” – The Psychologist

“Nimble, absorbing, and provocative... Playthings is a wonderful exemplar of the relationship between psychoanalysis and fiction, stand[ing] as a dutiful reminder of why Joyce was compelled to compare Freud's talking cure with blackmail.” – The Contemporary Small Press

“Vertiginous shifts in perception are one of the joys of this shape-shifting novel, as it perpetually plays with the reader's scope of insight, first widening, then narrowing, until we are never quite sure where we sit. ... In Pheby's novel, it is also possible to read the shifting constellations of suppressed trauma, paranoia and persecution within Schreber's wavering consciousness as an oblique reflection of the mental framework of fascism, and of his own culture's struggle to define its self-identity, which would erupt in unimaginable violence half a century later. In Playthings Schreber's insanity becomes symptomatic of a more profound social malaise, and the novel offers a prism through which we can view the unfolding psychological landscape of the 20th century, as embodied in one of its emblematic precursors.” – Full-Stop

“Playthings gets into the head, with tender attentiveness, of a man having a psychotic breakdown and takes up the story where the Schreber left off.” – The Lancet

“An incredible work of fiction, all the more fascinating for being based on an actual case. The writing is taut, intense, the everyday world a phantom which Schreber tries so desperately to attain. His disturbance of mind is not so much explained as experienced. This story is powerful and moving; I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the humanity behind mental illness.” – Never Imitate

“Writing of the highest order.” – Neil Griffiths

“Creating something out of this nothing is not an easy task but with this most unusual novel, the author has succeeded in doing just that.” –The Irish Times

“In the fiction of Schreber's madness, every person is, as he puts it, a “plaything of the Lower God.” In the reality that Schreber lived, the mentally ill were playthings of the “well,” children were playthings of adults, and minorities were playthings of the state. It is this economy of cruelty […] that is the seed of Schreber's suffering. Pheby illustrates this point with compassion and subtlety in “Playthings”; the book's hybrid position between the historical and the fictional makes it all the more potent.” – The New York Times

“Not often does a book remind one of both Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Ellis’ American Psycho, but here we are: immersed in compelling minutiae. Alex Pheby’s Playthings is simultaneously unsettling and fascinating, tragic and hilarious, the sort of novel with an easily-summarized story but a nearly impossible to summarize experience.” – 519 Magazine

“Spare and heartbreaking.” – Wall Street Journal

“It is utterly believable, utterly readable and utterly devastating.” – Leigh Wilson

“En una atmósfera onírica, a la que no le falta cierto humor angustiante, la voz narrativa, poética y extrañada, captura al lector hasta el final, de una manera que bien puede definirse como hipnótica.” – La Nacion

“En las páginas de Marionetas, la invención de detalles circunstanciales está al servicio de describir el momento en que la realidad cede para dejar paso a las formaciones del delirio. Más que en plantear una etiología novedosa de la psicosis, la novela de Pheby brilla al momento de captar los eclipses de ese mundo que, a falta de distinciones más finas, llamamos "objetivo". Así puede ocurrir que el tiempo se contraiga –pasan los años, pero no en la mente del paciente– o que lo real se vuelva insustancial y las personas adopten la consistencia del papel de seda: juguetes de un Dios chapucero, meros títeres al borde de la inexistencia.” – Infobae

Readings, Appearances and Performances

Greenwich Book Festival, May 2015 – pre-publication reading from Playthings

Stoke Newington Literary Festival, June 2015 – reading from Afterimages of Schreber

Waterstone's Piccadilly, London, October 2015 – reading from Playthings

Waterstone's New Street, Birmingham, November 2015 – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

British Library, London, February 2016 – conference talk on contemporary British small presses.

Creative Conversations, University of Greenwich, February 2016 – industry roundtable on establishing and maintaining audiences.

Wellcome Trust Blogger's Brunch, April 2016 – readings and interviews with invited interviewers

Wellcome Trust Lecture, April 2016 – lecture on Playthings

Bath Spa masters course visit, April 2016 - readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings for Creative Writing Masters students

5x15 Talk, The Tabernacle, April 2016 – lecture on Playthings

Little Atoms Podcast, April 2016 – interview re. Playthings

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, April 2016 – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Waterstone's Tottenham Court Road, Londnr, May 2016 – discussion panel re. academic study as a means of developing writing careers

Greenwich Book Festival, May 2016 – readings, discussion, and Q A re. mental illness in literature

Burley Fisher, July 2016 – reading, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Latitude Festival, July 2016 – discussion re. Wellcome Prize, writing, etc.

Edinburgh International Book Festival, August 2016 - readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Triskele Lit Fest, September 2016 – discussion panel on small presses

Betsey Trotwood, London, October 2017 – performance of The Operated Englishman.

Hearing Voices Project, University of Durham, January 2017 – multimedia performance of Afterimages of Schreber and Playthings

Horse Hospital, London, February 2017 – pre-publication reading of Lucia

BBC Radio Four, Front Row, June 2018 – interview on Lucia Joyce

Greenwich Book Festival 2018 – panel discussions on fictional biography and class in fiction.

James Joyce Summer School, Dublin, July 2018 - readings, discussion, and Q A re. Lucia

Winnipeg International Writers Festival, September 2018 – Canadian Mennonite University – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Winnipeg International Writers Festival, September 2018 – McNally Robinson – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Winnipeg International Writers Festival, September 2018 – Manitoba Theatre – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Drawn and Quarterly, Montreal, September 2018 - readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Monarch Tavern, Toronto, September 2018 – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Biblioasis, Windsor, September 2018 – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings

Bookmark, Cambridge Radio 105 – radio interview re. Lucia and dramatisation.

10x10 Bookblast, Norwich Waterstone’s, Oct 2018 – reading of Lucia and panel discussion on neo-modernism

Goldsmiths Writers Centre, Oct 2018 – reading of Lucia with Caryl Phillips

Vanguard Readings, October 2018– reading of Lucia

Republic of Consciousness Podcast #5: Galley Beggar Special – February 2019

London Review of Books Bookshop, 22nd March 2019 – reading of Lucia

Projector Launch, University of Greenwich – 5th April 2019 – reading of The Operated Englishman

Trinity College Lucia Joyce conference – 22th April, 2019

Republic of Consciousness, winner’s podcast – April 2019

Finnegansnight – 6th May, 2019

Burley Fisher Bookshop – 22nd May, 2019 – launch of We’ll Never Have Paris

Suffolk Book League – 10th June, 2019 – reading of Lucia

Greenwich Book Festival – 15th June, 2019 – readings

Sweetly, Dirty, Dirtier: A Bloomsday Celebration – 16th June, 2019 – reading of Lucia

Cheltenham Festival – 13th October, 2019 – discussion of Playthings, Lucia

Golden Hare Small Press Festival, Edinburgh – 19th October, 2019 – reading/discussion of Lucia

Yellow Book Salon – Vout-o-Reenees – 4th December, 2019 – reading of Mordew

Words Weekend, Gateshead Sage – 7th December, 2019 – reading of Mordew

Death//Sentence podcast – 21st May, 2020 – interview and reading of Mordew

Scholars in Spotlight – 20th July, 2020 – interview podcast.

Your Shelf podcast – 30th October, 2020 – interview and reading of Mordew

Suffolk University Creative Writing MA visit – 10th November, 2020 – interview and reading of Lucia

Carthorse Orchestra – 28th November, 2020 – interview and reading of How to write about things you can’t think about

Cymera Festival – 5th June 2021 – interview and reading of Mordew

Torcon 2021 – 8th June 2021 – panel discussion re. Mordew

Across the Pond – 2nd July 2021 – podcast interview re. Lucia

Bookin’ – 12th July 2021 – podcast interview re. Lucia

Alex Pheby x Golden Hare – 29^th July 2021 – Online Event for Mordew

Tor After Dark – 19^th August 2021 – Instagram takeover of Tor Books social media re. Mordew

Mysterious Galaxy's "Virtual Event – Alex Pheby in conversation with Christopher Buehlman – 28^th September 2021

C2E2 Panel – 10^th December 2021 – Tor Goes International

Edinburgh International Book Festival – 14^th August 2022 – Sequoia Nagamatsu, Courttia Newland & Alex Pheby: Resistance is Future

Norwich Waterstones – 9^th September 2022 – conversation re. Malarkoi

Foyles Charing Cross Road – 12^th September 2022 – conversation re. Malarkoi

Toppings, Edinburgh – 16^th October 2022 – talk on writing fantasy trilogies

Golden Hare, Edinburgh – 16^th November 2022 – talk re. Yuri Felsen’s Deceit

NCLA, 缅北禁地 – 24th February 2023 – talk with Paul Stanbridge

Dead Ink Books, Liverpool – 28th April 2023 – talk on Cities of the Weft

Friendly City Books – 20th October 2023 – podcast interview re. Malarkoi

Hellish Podcast – 24th September 2024 – interview re. Waterblack

NCLA, 缅北禁地 – 28^th November 2024 – interview with Kaliane Bradley

NCLA, 缅北禁地 – 5^th December 2024 – interview with Eley Williams

Bookhaus, Bristol – 16th February 2025 – reading of Waterblack

Death Sentence podcast – 25th February 2025 – interview re. Waterblack

Mapping the Zone podcast –18th May 2025 – interview re. Waterblack

Worldcon Seattle academic paper presentation – 13th August 2025 – Fragmented Narratives and the Limits of Consciousness in Contemporary Speculative Fiction

Worldcon Seattle panel moderation – 13th August 2025 – No Tropes for Me - Let’s Write Weird

Worldcon Seattle table talk – 14th August 2025

Dead Ink, Liverpool – 18th September 2025 – talk re. Writing the Magic

National Writing Centre, Norwich – 11th October 2025 – writing workshop

MCM Comic Con, London – 25th October 2025 – talk re. Writing the Magic

缅北禁地

Professor Alex Pheby

Professor of Creative Writing (Prose)

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