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Below is a list of writers’ archives held at the British Archive for Contemporary Writing (BACW).
We also hold significant material from other writers who have corresponded with these authors, or who have appeared at our year round literary festival.
Use our archive catalogue to search and browse collections in more depth and email archives@uea.ac.uk for additional information.
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Naomi Alderman
Critically acclaimed and prize-winning author and graduate of UEA's MA in Creative Writing. Alderman’s archive features notebooks, manuscript drafts for her novels, Disobedience and The Power, as well as annotated creative writing workshop submissions, early short stories and more.
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Tash Aw
Prize-winning author and graduate of the MA in Creative Writing, Tash Aw has published critically-acclaimed novels and memoirs as well as short stories and essays. His archive contains annotated drafts of manuscripts and editorial correspondence with his publisher, and the writer, Yiyun Li.
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Richard Beard
Richard Beard is an acclaimed novelist and non-fiction writer and Creative Writing Fellow and MA graduate. His archive includes typescripts, notebooks, notes, drafts, correspondence, press-cuttings and more. The archive holds insights into the structuring and redrafting of his Goldsmiths' Prize shortlisted novel, Acts of the Assassins, and shows the editorial comments of both his literary agent and editor.
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David Bellos
This archive contains drafts, working documents, and corrected copies of David Bellos' translations of the works of French writer Georges Perec.
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Jay Bernard
Jay Bernard (FRSL) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in social histories. They have published three pamphlets, 'The Red and Yellow Nothing' (2016), 'English Breakfast' (2013) and 'Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl' (2008), and their work has been featured in numerous anthologies, including 'Mapping the Future' (2023), '100 Queer Poems' (2022), 'TEN: The New Wave' (2014) and 'Out of Bounds: Black British Writers and Place' (2012). Jay was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020 and winner of the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for their first collection 'Surge'. Recent work includes 'Blue Now', a live rendition of Derek Jarman’s film 'Blue'; 'Crystals of this Social Substance', a sound installation about young people, capitalism and money at the ‘21 Serpentine pavilion; 'Complicity', a pamphlet about colonial memory in the urban environment, based on the collection at the Tate; and 'The Last 7 Years', a digital and live sound piece produced by Art Angel. Jay is a DAAD literature fellow and a 2023/24 fellow at the Institute of Ideas and Imagination, Paris.
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Malcolm Bradbury
more...Co-founder of the Creative Writing MA here at UEA, (with Sir Angus Wilson), Sir Malcolm Bradbury was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, literary criticism and television plays and series. Included in his personal papers are film, radio and television scripts including popular British crime series 'A Touch of Frost', 'Dalziel and Pascoe', and 'Kavanagh QC'. Also see the MA Creative Writing collections, in our Collections A-Z, for material relating to his Professorship of the MA in Creative Writing at UEA.
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Anthony Vahni Capildeo
Anthony Vahni Capildeo is a writer of poetry and non-fiction. They are Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York; a former Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge; an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford; and a Trustee of the Charles Causley Trust. Recent books include 'Like a Tree, Walking' (2021), which draws on their interest in ecopoetics and silence; 'Skin Can Hold' (2019), which arose from collaborations in various forms of performance; 'Venus as a Bear' (2018), poems which centre on ‘things’ in the tradition of Francis Ponge and Gertrude Stein; 'Measures of Expatriation' (2016), which crosses the borders between prose and poetry; and 'Utter' (2013), inspired by lexicography and the sense of language as multifoliate, not monolithic. They have also published many small-press pamphlets and intermedia works. Their longstanding commitment to non-fiction has included pieces on microtravel; cocoa growing in Trinidad; an English feminist gardener in Kenya; and citizenship in Brexit Britain. Capildeo lives in Scotland, and often returns to Trinidad, their birthplace. Capildeo has a passion for Trinidad’s traditional masquerade and is a band member of Belmont Exotic Stylish Sailors.
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Amit Chaudhuri
Former Professor of Contemporary Literature here at UEA, Chaudhuri is a distinguished literary critic and prize-winning author of eight novels. His archive contains early notebooks capturing short story ideas written during his PhD.
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Lee Child
more...Lee Child is an award-winning author who has written over 20 novels and numerous short stories. His archive contains early drafts, manuscripts and correspondence relating to the creation of one of English literature's most enduring characters, Jack Reacher. The archive was opened to the public in 2022.
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Mark Cocker
Graduate of UEA, Mark Cocker is an acclaimed author, naturalist and environmental activist. Featuring notebooks, correspondence, draft manuscripts and more, this collection provides fascinating insight into Cocker's nature writing.
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Andrew Cowan
Convenor and graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at UEA, Andrew Cowan has won several awards for his novels. Included in this collection are novel manuscripts, correspondence and research papers.
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Patricia Crampton
Prize-winning literary translator, Patricia Crampton, translated over 200 children’s books and over 50 adult novels. Crampton worked as a translator on the Nuremberg trials and her archive also contains correspondence from that period.
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Roger Deakin
Explore the archive of nature writer and independent film-maker, Roger Deakin, a pioneer of the 'wild swimming' movement. Contains working papers, book drafts and manuscripts, radio programme recordings and more.
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Robert Edric
Take a look at the unique creative writing processes, scribbles and revisions of award-winning novelist Robert Edric. His archive contains manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs of his work.
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Adam Foulds
Award-winning author Adam Foulds is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at UEA and of St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he studied English. His novel 'The Quickening Maze' was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. His archive includes manuscripts of several novels, his long narrative poem 'The Broken Word', short stories and other poems. Foulds was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2010.
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Anthony Grey
Personal and literary papers relating to the novelist, foreign journalist and BBC presenter Anthony Grey. The archive holds original manuscripts, research papers, photographs, publicity material and correspondence relating to his publications, magazine journalism, television and radio productions.
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Charlie Higson
Charlie Higson graduated from UEA in English and Film studies. He is an award-winning comedy writer, actor and best-selling novelist. His writing and performing partnership with fellow UEA student, Paul Whitehouse, led to the creation of the highly successful cult TV comedy sketch show, 'The Fast Show'. Explore his rich and diverse collection featuring correspondence, photographs, production notes and manuscripts. The archive also contains other successful TV scriptwriting material and novel drafts and editorial comments relating to his 'Young Bond' novels and his other books for children and young adults.
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Alan Hunter
Author of the 'Chief Inspector George Gently' series, Hunter wrote forty-six novels. His archive contains manuscripts and typescripts for each of his novels, as well as some plays, poetry and short stories.
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Doris Lessing
more...A vast collection of personal papers, correspondence, notebooks and diaries from the Nobel Laureate, Doris Lessing, who wrote over 50 books as well as plays, short stories, poems and non-fiction. Lessing enjoyed a decades' long association with UEA where she held the title of Distinguished Fellow of Literature. Lessing's authorised biographer, Patrick French, describes the archive as an extraordinary and unique record of her life and work. Some of Lessing's archive is embargoed during the writing of her biography.
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Richard Mabey
Richard Mabey is an honorary graduate of UEA and a highly acclaimed nature writer and broadcaster, focusing on the relations between nature and culture. He has also worked as a journalist, conservationist and a government adviser.
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Sarah Maguire
Sarah Maguire (1957-2017) was a poet, translator and broadcaster. She published four collections of poetry to wide acclaim. Having left school early to train as a gardener, Maguire's poetry was deeply influenced by horticulture, and she later edited an anthology of botanical verse, Flora Poetica (2001). In 1987, Maguire graduated from UEA as a mature student with a First in English and American Studies. During her time as a student, she had poems published in journals and was later nominated as one of the 1994 New Generation Poets. Maguire was the first writer to be sent by the British Council to Palestine and Yemen. She was a passionate advocate for poetry in translation and founded the Poetry Translation Centre in 2004.
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Gail McConnell
Gail McConnell is a poet and academic from Northern Ireland. Her debut collection, The Sun is Open (2021), flits between a child and adult self in approaching an archive relating to her father’s murder. She is also the author of two poetry pamphlets. Fothermather (2019) explores love, queerness, baby talk, new parenthood and forms of attachment. It was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award and adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2020. Fourteen (2018) explores creatureliness, IVF, bonds and breaks. Her long poem, ‘Type Face’ (2016), about reading the official report on her father’s murder by the IRA, was published online in Blackbox Manifold. Gail is Reader in English at Queen’s University Belfast and author of Northern Irish Poetry and Theology (2014).
Mal Peet
Mal Peet (1947-2015) was an award-winning novelist who disliked being defined by the age of his audience or restricted by genre. Though he shunned the YA label his football novel 'Keeper' and others found particular appeal with younger readers. Together with his wife Elspeth Graham they collaborated on dozens of picture books for children including 'Cloud Tea Monkeys'. This visually appealing collection includes manuscripts, editorial correspondence and marketing ephemera.
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Lorna Sage
more...Lorna Sage was a journalist, critic, and Professor of English Literature at UEA from 1994. She became best known for her award-winning autobiographical memoir 'Bad Blood.' Her archive includes papers relating to all aspects of her teaching and writing career, with an emphasis on female authors, including Doris Lessing and Angela Carter. A digital exhibition to celebrate twenty years of Bad Blood is also available, revealing some of the personal diaries and papers Sage used in its writing.
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JD Salinger - Hartog
This collection contains over fifty letters and postcards sent by J.D Salinger - author of bestselling novel 'Catcher in the Rye' - to his long time friend, Donald Hartog. Click 'more' to browse the collection via our catalogue.
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WG Sebald
A small collection of audiovisual recordings from founding director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and previous chair of German Literature at UEA.
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Joelle Taylor
Joelle Taylor is a poet, playwright and author. She has performed across the UK as well as internationally and her work is on the OCR GCSE English syllabus. A former UK slam champion, she founded the national youth slam championships SLAMbassadors in 2001 for the Poetry Society and was its Artistic Director and National Coach until 2018. She has published four full collections of poetry: Ska Tissue (2011), The Woman Who Was Not There (2014), Songs My Enemy Taught Me (2017) and C+nto & Othered Poems (2021), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Songs My Enemy Taught Me was inspired by fusing her own story of surviving sexual abuse with masterclasses engaging groups of vulnerable women across the UK. Speaking to refugees, prisoners, young mothers and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, the collection powerfully evokes the struggles women still face globally in the twenty-first century. A documentary about her life and work, Life Changing Verse, was broadcast on television in 2010, and in 2020 she made a documentary for BBC radio about butch lesbian culture.
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Sara Taylor
Graduate of UEA’s MA in Creative Writing with a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing, Sara Taylor has published two acclaimed novels. Her archive contains novel manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks and detailed research papers.
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Snoo Wilson
more...Snoo read American Studies at UEA and began his writing career the year he graduated. He was one of the handful of playwrights who reinvented British theatre in the 1970’s and 80’s. The archive contains extensive notebooks, diaries, manuscripts and working papers.