Guest Speaker: Craig Cliff

By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:

Creative Cities Southern Hui warmly welcomes CRAIG CLIFF as delegate and guest speaker. Craig will be participating in events for the duration of the Hui, and speaking at Creative Connections on Thursday 30th November.

‘I’m always looking for new ways into stories or out of old constraints. The Creative Cities Southern Hui promises days of great discussion, provocation and, hopefully, some lasting connections.’

Craig Cliff is the 2017 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago.

His short story collection, A Man Melting, won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. His novel, The Mannequin Makers, is ‘a spellbinding and original tale, rife with perilous journeys, fascinating historical detail, and memorable characters’ (Publishers Weekly) that has been translated into Romanian and comes out in the US in December 2017. This year he is working on a novel about Hollywood, fatherhood and levitating saints.

In addition to fiction, Craig has published essays, columns, reviews, travel writing and poetry. He’s particularly interested in the creative use of imperfect Artificial Intelligence, and the overlap between the narrative elements of video games and more analogue forms of literature.

Creative Connections aims to explore creativity as the touchstone of healthy, sustainable communities and celebrate the power of collaboration to inspire.