5 minutes with ... Dr. Judith Heneghan

What's your favourite Uni memory?  

I was running an interactive workshop on ghost stories after dark in Medecroft Annexe. Never been so spooked in my life. Also, listening to students' sensory descriptions of selecting, unwrapping and consuming a Quality Street. 
 
What do you write?

Currently I write fiction for adults and nonfiction for children. I've written children's fiction too and done some short feature journalism. My first novel for adults, Snegurochka, is set in Kiev in the early 1990s and publishes this April. Two nonfiction books for very young readers come out later in the year - All About Bodies and All About Feelings. Writing for different audiences keeps me on my toes.

What's your favourite book?

Last year, Lincoln in the Bardo. George Saunders gives voice to a graveyard full of ghosts in the most profound and extraordinary ways. This year so far, Fox 8, also by George Saunders - a short comic masterpiece and a fable for our times.

Best thing about The University of Winchester

The people who study and work here. Getting to read new work by emerging student writers can be a moving and powerful experience. I've also wept with laughter in the Creative Nonfiction for Children module and I'll never tire of the view across Winchester to Cheesefoot Head.

Guilty Pleasure

Reading children's picture book Burglar Bill out loud while scoffing all the purple Quality Street. 

 

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