Dr Alicia Rouverol
School of Arts, Media and Creative Technologies
Current positions
Lecturer in Creative Writing
Biography
I came to University of Salford in 2019 as an internationally recognised scholar within my prior field of oral history. My first non-fiction co-authored book, ‘I Was Content and Not Content’: The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry (2000), chronicled one working woman’s experience of plant closure, examining issues of the local and global through a hybrid construct (oral history, photographs, historical essay, methodology and creative nonfiction). The book was called ‘compassionate and sorely needed’ by The New York Times and nominated for the OHA Book Award. In oral history, my academic articles have been published nationally, internationally, translated, taught and anthologised. My collaborative approach to oral history is what distinguished my career and is illustrated in the Brown Creek Life Review Project, a three-year initiative that utilised oral history and performance in a correctional setting. In 2013/2017 I completed the MA in Creative Writing at University of Manchester (NAFUM Award) and PhD in Creative Writing (Presidential Doctoral Scholarship Award). My creative practice-as-research is primarily as a novelist, short fiction writer and non-fiction experimental writer. The 2025 European tour of my debut novel, Dry River (Bridge House, 2023), has brought my creative practice as research to the international stage as well.
Areas of Research
My critical research is in Contemporary British and American Fiction, women’s experimental writing and globalisation. I am interested in forms of fiction that articulate the economic present and the effects of globalisation. I have recently completed two novels that critique neoliberalism and the impact of economic policy on place. The first, Dry River, was nominated for five literary prizes and is being read in book clubs on both sides of the Atlantic; and in 2025 the novel was featured in my European tour with exhibitions by artist and University of Lancashire lecturer Andy Broadey (who also designed the book's cover). Granite Rock and Other Stories, a short story collection launched in 2019 as an inaugural Artist in Residence at John Rylands Library, is forthcoming from Bridge House in May 2026. My first book, 'I Was Content and Not Content', awakened my interest in economic fictions (or ‘economising fictions’), which I am now writing on critically; it also drew on my long arc in the fields of oral history and folklore. I am keen for narrative and its uses—in application, in theory—including narratology and the role of time in narrative, the subject of my critical thesis (on Ali Smith and Jennifer Egan). I am currently returning to my non-fiction roots, a book based on my three-year project using story and performance to work with inmates at a rural correctional facility in the US, featuring a performance aimed at at-risk youth. With support from the UoS Public Policy Support Fund, we recently created a series of video clips for youth on social media. I am also engaged in the creative industries, through a multi-year study of creative/cultural industries (CCI) and higher education (HEI) partnerships, involving collaboration with University of Manchester, University of York and Cardiff University. Additionally fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in various journals, with reviews of prominent contemporary works in The Monitor (US) and The Manchester Review (UK). I have been a reader for Narrative Magazine and Forge Literary Magazine, and since 2024 I am a commissioning editor at Bridge House Publishing.
Practice-Based Outputs, Creative Writing (shorter works):
Aldebaran’ (poem), streetcake magazine, Issue 78.2 (May 2022)
‘Quarantine Season’ (non-fiction), re-published in Colours of Covid, Alchemy Arts (March 2021)
‘Quarantine Season’ (non-fiction), Cicatrice, Iso-Poetics Issue (April 2020)
'Down to the River’ (story), Route 57: Environs; Modern Natures, Issue 15 (April 2019), pp. 107-112
‘On the Road’ (poem), The Wandering Bard, Autumn Issue (September 2018)
‘Backstroke’ (story), The Manchester Review, 19 (December 2017)
‘Dry River’ (novel excerpt), in The Manchester Anthology 2013, ed. by Tasha Smith and others (Manchester: Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, 2013), pp. 70-74
‘Inside Stories’ (non-fiction), The Independent (9-15 June 1999), pp. 24-25
Literary Reviews:
‘Olga Zilberbourg’s Like Water and Other Stories’, The Manchester Review, 22, November 2019
‘Manchester Folio: Ali Smith, How to be both’, The Manchester Review, 15, March 2015
‘David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King’, The Monitor (online edition), 15 April 2011
‘David Lipsky’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace’, The Monitor (online edition), 13 April 2010
‘David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water’, The Monitor (online edition), 14 April 2009
Areas of Supervision
Creative-critical projects in contemporary British and American fiction, women's experimental writing, globalisation, narrative and narratology, creative industries, expressions of neoliberalism and the effects of economics in the novel.
I teach or have taught on the following undergraduate modules: Researching and Planning a Novel; Final Portfolio; Reading for Writers; Introduction to Poetry; Final Portfolio; Critical Skills.
I also teach or contribute at postgraduate level on the following modules: Writing Workshop; Experimental Practice; Techniques in Innovative Writing; Theory, Text, Writing; Professional Practice; and Final Project.
I also supervise or co-supervise MPhil and PhD students; current students include:
Patti Edgar, 'The Remaking of the Female Self in a Neo-liberal Culture'. PhD by Published Works (recruited, Canada)
Louise Heywood, 'The Power of Names in Worldbuilding through Fantasy Onomastics'. - MPhil
Valerie Waterhouse, 'The Life and Works of Malachi Whitaker (1895-1976)'. Winner of the Kitty Kelley Fellowship, 2025. - PhD (recruited)
Nandakumar Saravanan, ‘Exploring the Intersection Between Economics and Place: Writing as Escapist Practice'. - MPhil (recruited)
Racheal Bankong, 'Exploring Contemporary Adaptations of Folkltale Narrations in Africa: Studying the Bachama Community in Nigeria'. - PhD (recruited, Nigeria)
Teni Osayemi, ‘What is nationality, if not imagined? A Creative Exploration of Identity and Belonging’. - PhD (recruited)
Qualifications
-
Managing at Manchester for Researchers certificate course
2021 - 2021 -
Creative Writing
2013 - 2017 -
Creative Writing
2012 - 2013 -
Folklore
1991 - 1995 -
English with Creative Writing Concentration
1982 - 1986