Graeme Harper

Graeme Harper is a creative writer and academic, who writes under his own name and under the pseudonym Brooke Biaz. In 1993, Harper received the degree of Doctor of Creative Arts, specializing in creative writing, at the University of Technology, Sydney. This was the first doctorate in creative writing conferred in Australia.

Harper's fiction, which is often set in invented locations, on fictional islands, or in places resembling a combination of America, Australia and the United Kingdom, explores the evolution of characters faced with unusual situations or in historically challenging circumstances. He has won a range of literary and research awards, and his critical work is widely cited, particularly in relation to the development of the contemporary critical study of creative writing.

Education and academic career Following his award of the DCA degree at the University of Technology, Sydney, Harper sought further experience and, attracted by the work of Sir Malcolm Bradbury, headed to the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, where he studied and taught in the creative and critical writing program, under the tutelage of Professor Jon Cook and connecting to Bradbury, as he had planned. He received a Ph.D. from the UEA School of English and American Studies in 1997. During this time at UEA he began work with Multilingual Matters Publishers, who later would launch the now well-known journal New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing.

In 1997, he accepted a position at the University of Wales, Bangor, where he taught creative writing and developed the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts. While at the University of Wales he was a member of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture Panel of Experts (DGX), from 1998 to 2001, assessing creative and educational projects across Europe. It was also while at the University of Wales that he began his appointment as panelist and assessor at Great Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), first as a panelist and then as a senior panelist and strategic committee member on practice-led creative research from 2003 until 2015.

In 2004, he was appointed as the founding chair of the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth, staying at Portsmouth from 2004 to 2006, and establishing the school, which contains cinema and media studies, creative writing, theatre and music studies. During his time at Portsmouth he began publishing with the emerging Parlor Press in the United States, whose focus on both creative and critical writing was of interest to him. His first work with Parlor was the collection of short stories and a novella, Small Maps of the World (2006).

He returned to the University of Wales in 2007, having been invited to establish an initiative focusing on the development of creative and critical practices. There he created the inaugural National Institute for Excellence in the Creative Industries (NIECI), which afterwards became the School of Creative Studies and Media. Harper was later promoted to Director of Research for the College of Arts, Humanities and Education, while remaining involved as a doctoral supervisor of creative writing in the new creative studies school.

Completing his novel, Moon Dance, in 2010-2011, he was awarded fellowships to continue his writing, research and teaching, first at the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Alabama, as a Distinguished Professor in the honors program, and later at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (2010-2011) as a visiting Research Professor, where his focus was on creativity and environmental design in medical environments. It was while at the University of Texas Medical Branch that he wrote early drafts of the novel The Invention of Dying (2015)

In 2011 he moved permanently to the United States, becoming the Dean of The Honors College at Oakland University in Michigan, USA, a founding institution in US Honors colleges and programs, which in 2025 was named as the Donna and Walt Young Honors College. He wrote the novel The Japanese Cook during his first years at Oakland. There he also directs the Midwest Center for Undergraduate Research (MCUR). the former inaugural chair of the Higher Education Committee at the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) in the UK, and the past chair of the Creative Writing Studies Organization in the USA. He is currently Director of the National Society for Minorities in Honors. and of the Creative Writing Studies Center. He has been an honorary researcher and creative practice professor at Edge Hill University in the UK, at Emory University in the USA (MARBL Fellow) and at Shanghai University in China.

In 2005, Harper became an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM), building on his involvement in the launch of the Medical Humanities in the United Kingdom, and later informing his exploration of medical environments during his fellowship time at the University of Texas Medical Branch. His interest in empathy in medicine and in medical science has seen him involved in the work of Leader Dogs for the Blind, an international guide dog organization. In 2018 he initiated (and currently advises) a university-wide student program to raise future leader dogs for the blind and sight-impaired. His novel, Releasing the Animals, while not about Leader Dogs, is an exploration of freedom and empowerment, set in the vicinity of a fictional zoo. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), having been one of the founding members of RSA Cymru/Wales, of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

In addition to his work as Editor-in-Chief of the journal New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, he is also the Editor of the Creative Industries Journal. He is Co-Editor (with O. Evans) of Studies in European Cinema and (with O. Evans and C. Johnston) of the Journal of European Popular Culture.

Publications

Fiction 1988: Black Cat, Green Field 2000: Swallowing Film 2006: Small Maps of the World 2008: Moon Dance 2009: Camera Phone 2011: Visit the Communion Islands 2013: Making Up 2015: The Invention of Dying 2018: The Japanese Cook 2023: Releasing the Animals 2026: Robots and Other People

Non-Fiction 2001: Colonial and Postcolonial Incarceration 2002: Comedy, Fantasy and Colonialism 2005: Signs of Life: Medicine and Cinema (With Andrew Moor) 2006: Teaching Creative Writing 2006: The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film (With Rob Stone) 2008: Creative Writing Guidebook 2009: Authors at Work: the Creative Environment (Essays and Studies) (With Ceri Sullivan) 2009: Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: A Critical Overview (With Section Editors, Ruth Doughty and Jochen Eisentraut) 2010: On Creative Writing 2011: Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography (With J. Rayner) 2011: Creative Writing Studies: Practice, Research and Pedagogy (With Jeri Kroll) 2012: Key Issues in Creative Writing (With Dianne Donnelly) 2012: Research Methods in Creative Writing (With Jeri Kroll) 2013: Film Landscapes: Design, Discovery and Communication (With J. Rayner) 2013: New Ideas on the Writing Arts: Practice, Culture, Literature 2013: The Blackwell Companion to Creative Writing 2014: The Future for Creative Writing 2015: Creative Writing and Education 2016: Exploring Creative Writing 2017: Changing Creative Writing in America 2017: Filmurbia: Cinema and the Suburbs (With D. Forrest and J. Rayner) 2018: Critical Approaches to Creative Writing 2018: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Honors Education 2019: Honors Education: Excellence, Innovation, Ingenuity 2019: The Desire to Write 2019: Thinking Creative Writing 2020: Creative Writing: Drafting, Revising, Editing (With Jeri Kroll) 2020: Discovering Creative Writing 2020: Responding to Creative Writing 2021: Honors Education and the Foundation of Fairness: A Question of Equity 2022: Honors Education Around the World 2022: Creative Writing Analysis 2022: Innovative Practices in Creative Writing Teaching 2023 Stimulus, Intention and Process in Creative Writing: A Reader 2024: Advancing Honors Education for Today and Tomorrow 2024: The Creative Writing Compass 2025: New Writing Scholarship: Studying Creative Writing 2025: New Writing Explorations: Researching Creative Writing 2025: AI and Creative Writing 2026: Empathy in Creative Writing: Ethics, Diversity and Communication 2026: Creative Writing Curiosity: Ten Essays on the Curious and the Writerly

Selected awards and honors

2026. Member of the Order of Australia 2021. Shanghai He Jianning Literary Prize 2017. Elected Honorary Member, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society 2014. Elected Honorary Member, Golden Key International Honor Society 2011-2015. Visiting Research Professor, Edge Hill University 2012. The Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library Fellowship (Creative Writing) 2011. The UTMB Visiting Research Professor, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas. 2010. MARBL Fellow, Emory University, Atlanta, USA 2010. Pascal Vacca Distinguished Professor, Eminent Scholars Chair, University of Montevallo 2009. Sainsbury Centre Visiting Scholar - Summer Resident 2008. Elected Member, Literature Wales 2006-2008. Appointed Creative Writing Member, Arts and Humanities Research Council Committee on Practice-Led Research 2005. British Academy Travelling Grant 2004. British Academy Grant for Creative Writing Research 2002. BBC World Service Short Story Award 2001. National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Awardee 2001. Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Writing Grant 2001. Norton Island Creative Writing Residency 1993-1997. Overseas Student Award and University of East Anglia Creative Writing Scholarship 1991-1994. Vogel Literary Award for New Writers, Shortlisted for Jacob's Shroud (1991), Moon Rising (1992) and The Valley (1994) 1990-1994. Inaugural Scholars Award in Creative and Critical Writing, Commonwealth Vice-Chancellors and Principals 1990. Australia Council Literary Fellowship 1989. NSW Premier's Award in New Fiction 1988. Inaugural Australian National Book Council Award for New Writers - the Banjo Paterson Award