Nun, staff member, writer - the many talents of Jenny Newman

Students attending classes in the John Foster Building’s old chapel may not realise it was once the place of worship for an order of nuns who lived in that very building. Former LJMU staff member, Jenny Newman, was herself a nun when she started her degree in English Literature at the University of Liverpool. She attended her classes in a habit, wimple and veil, a far cry from her fellow students in miniskirts and kaftans. After Jenny completed her degree, she left the order, years later returning to Liverpool to join LJMU in 1996 as a staff member. From then until 2010 she contributed a wide range of ideas, programmes and policies, developing what is now the LJMU Creative Writing programme. 

LJMU in turn played an important role in Jenny’s creative writing, and she was drawn to work here because the university had such a rich history in the creative arts. The School of Art and Design (formerly the Art School), was a couple of streets away, where Sam Walsh and Nicky Horsfield had lectured, and which counted John Lennon and Maurice Cockrill among its alumni. The poet Adrian Henri’s house was nearby, the scene of fabulous parties and engaging poetry soirees, the Everyman Theatre was a couple of streets away, and the Walker Art Gallery, one of the biggest and richest outside London, was just down the hill. Many LJMU staff were drawn from or associated with these creative hubs.

At LJMU Jenny helped to establish a range of reforms and new programmes including a Single Honours in Creative Writing, and then she introduced successful MA Writing and PhD programmes. Jenny keeps in touch with many of her former writing students and also is a member of a writing group made up of former and current LJMU Writing staff. These creative conversations and networks are important parts of the writing process, especially as publishing becomes more centralised and commercially focussed. A life lesson for all writers, Jenny believes, is to write on and then seek publication with one of the myriad small presses actively promoting more marginalised voices and writing.

As well as her academic management skills, Jenny is an esteemed writer and has published extensively in fiction and nonfiction. In two of her books, ‘Going In’ and ‘Life Class’ she drew on her experiences as a novice and both novels explore her creative and contemplative life, including her visits to the LJMU chapel in the John Foster Building. Over the years she shared this advice with her writing students– write what you know but don’t stifle your imagination either. All Jenny’s books reflect her passions, from how to write well in her books about writing craft, to her nun’s journey. Her most recent book, ‘In the Blood’, also explores Jenny’s passion for and commitment to the environment, and particularly the senseless cruelty of foxhunting.

‘In the Blood’s’ narrator is twelve-year-old Jackie, who, like so many children from Liverpool during World War Two, was sent for safety to rural North Wales. Uprooted from all she knows, Jackie learns to speak Welsh and is taught by Iolo, her ambiguous host, to hunt in the Welsh way favoured by Gwyn ap Nudd, the ancient god of the chase. Jackie sleeps in the kennels along with Iolo’s pack of foxhounds, studies their instincts, understands their dreams, and soon comes to know every stream and covert in their valley. The war over, her mother reclaims her, but by then Jackie sees herself as more hound than girl. 

Like Jenny’s earlier fiction, ‘In the Blood’ divides opinion and Jenny is happy with that. Through all her teaching and writing she has wanted her students and readers to reflect profoundly on difficult questions, especially those about identity, creativity and nature. Jenny may have ridden to hounds as a youngster but as an adult she soon became firmly anti-blood sports, and she now donates all her author proceeds to Protect the Wild. In the Blood is not an anti-hunting tract, she stresses: it aims to present a nuanced account of a primal activity which shaped our development as humans as well as the origins of art.

Jenny remains profoundly grateful for the rich diversity of her life, from a teenage nun attending early morning Mass in the John Foster Building’s old chapel to her relationships with LJMU students and staff. Her love of nature and her concern for the planet will continue to seed her writing. Like Jackie in ‘In the Blood’, her keen observations, from the stained-glass windows of the chapel to the gardens outside, continue to shape Jenny’s creativity and her life philosophy and she’s proud that LJMU has played such a key role in that.

In the Blood (2024, Psychology New Press, London), available from bookstores or online at Amazon.