Dr Ellen Wiles

I am a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, and a novelist, sound artist, and anthropologist. I previously worked as a barrister and as a musician, and I have an interdisciplinary approach to arts-led research. My personal website is www.ellenwiles.com 

My latest novel, The Unexpected (HarperCollins, 2024) follows two female friends, Robin and Kessie, who find themselves platonically co-parenting a baby. As well as exploring themes of motherhood and friendship, it looks at the anthropology of kinship, and the evolution of family law to support so-called unconventional families. It has been acclaimed as 'Wonderful… all sorts of common assumptions about motherhood and family are turned on their head. It’s brilliant on friendship, identity, longing and resilience’ in the Daily Mail, and as 'A heartwarming depiction of female friendship as a bond stronger than any other' in The Times,

My sound artist practice focuses on making literary audio work engaging with landscape, nature and environmental change. I have been commissioned by organisations including The National Trust to make fictional sound stories and immersive soundwalks. I am currently Artist-in-Residence at CREWW for a two-year project called Storying Water, funded by South West Water. I will be making informative and literary audio work in collaboration with scientists and industry experts exploring the water system and its environmental resilience. My latest sound story, Paper Heron, was a commission as part of the National Heritage Lottery-funded Paper & Print project, and will be shown as a sound installation at the project exhibition at Positive Light Projects. 

I am the author of two novels and two crossover monographs.

My debut novel, The Invisible Crowd (HQ, 2017), explores human experiences of the immigration and asylum system in the UK. It follows Yonas, an Eritrean asylum seeker, on his quest for refugee status in the UK, and it is a polyphonic story, narrated from the points of view of lots of other characters who meet him on his jounry, including his barrister, a bin man who gives him a lift, a home office interviewer, and an artist. It was inspired by my own legal work and years of research, and was awarded a Victor Turner Prize for ethnographic writing. 

Live Literature: The Experience and Cultural Value of Literary Performance Events from Salons to Festivals (Palgrave, 2021) is a multidisciplinary book that interrogates the contemporary culture of live literature events and how they shape literary culture through ethnographies of a major literary festival and an LGBTQ+ literary salon. Experimental in its writing style, it makes a case for using creative writing techniques in ethnographic writing to interrogate the nature and value of arts-based experiences.

Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition (Columbia University Press, 2015), a crossover monograph, is the first book to explore Myanmar's fascinating literature and culture under decades of censorship. It includes new literary translations paired with extended interviews with authors from three generations. Taking an anthropological perspective, and a literary-ethnographic approach, it examines way in which censorship shapes literary creativity, culture, and production. 

As a curator of literary experiences and events, I have been funded by Arts Council England to create immersive short story shows in library spaces through the Ark project. I also host podcasts and in-conversation events, such as The Hexagon arts and culture podcast.

Before taking up a post at Exeter, I taught creative writing at QMUL, City Lit, Camden Arts Centre, and The British Library. I previously worked as a barrister, specialising in human rights, at 39 Essex Chambers (2007-2014). During that time I completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London (Distinction). I also have a Masters in Law from UCL, when I specialised in human rights and social theory (Distinction). My undergraduate degree was in Music at Oxford University, where I was awarded the top first.

More information about my writing access to selected audio work is available on my personal website, ellenwiles.com.

Teaching:

Due to my Storying Water research grant I am not currently teaching. I usually convene two modules: Write After Reading, a first year undergraduate creative writing module, and Writing for the Planet: an MA module engaging with literary activism and the climate emergency.

Research supervision:

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students for creative writing projects that chime with my research interests. I currently supervise Fiona Williams and Emma Craigie, and past PhD students include Prof. Anna Kiernan.