Professor Peter Boxall

Professor Peter Boxall

Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshop

Details to follow.

Speaker Details:

Professor Peter Boxall is Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has written several books on the novel, including Twenty-First-Century Fiction (2013), The Value of the Novel (2015), The Prosthetic Imagination (2020), and The Possibility of Literature (2024). His most recent book, Beckett and Leopardi, co-authored with Peter Nicholls, was published in 2025. He is editor of Textual Practice and series editor of ‘Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture’. He is currently completing Fictions of the West, which examines the crisis of the political fictions that have sustained the idea of the ‘West’, and Zadie Smith: Life in Fiction, which explores the relationship between fiction and life in Smith’s work.

About the Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshops:

The Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshops were established in 2022 by OCLW’s Professor Dame Hermione Lee, Professor Elleke Boehmer, and Dr Kate Kennedy in collaboration with the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford. The workshops celebrate the life and intellectual legacy of Professor Laura Marcus (1956–2021): one of the most influential literary scholars of her generation and a much-loved colleague, teacher, and friend.

Held twice each term, the workshops provide a rare and valuable space for sustained intellectual exchange between students, academics, and writers. They foster conversations around creative practice and academic research, bringing together established and emerging voices. Their purpose is not simply to present completed research, but to create a collaborative intellectual space in which ideas can be developed, tested, challenged, and refined.

As part of The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing’s fifteenth anniversary fundraising campaign, we are seeking to establish The Laura Marcus Fund to secure the future of the Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshops.

By donating to the Laura Marcus Fund, you will help ensure that Laura's vision of scholarship—rigorous, generous, imaginative, and collaborative—continues to inspire future generations.

Find out more and donate here.

Further Details and Contacts:

This is an in-person event and will not be recorded.

This workshop is exclusively open to current members of the University of Oxford. Workshop places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to members of the English Faculty. 

Registration is required and will close at 17:00 on Tuesday, 27 October 2026. Confirmation of successful registration will be sent soon after.

If you are able, please consider donating £5, £10, £20, or more to support OCLW’s free events, outreach activities, and programmes, helping us to keep life-writing open to all.

Donations can be made when booking your place or via our online donations portal. Every gift makes a difference. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Queries regarding this event should be addressed to Dr Julia Dallaway.