Sam Meekings

About

Sam Meekings is Director of the Liberal Arts Program and Associate Professor in Residence of Creative Writing at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is also an internationally-renowned poet and novelist, and a scholar of creative practices and processes with a special focus on digital and trauma-informed creative writing.

His latest book, Wonder and Loss: A Practical Memoir for Writing About Grief, is both a deeply personal memoir and a critical analysis of narratological and psychological theories on how we process grief which outlines the transformative impact storytelling can have on the bereaved. 

Meekings is also the author of the novels Under Fishbone Clouds (called “a poetic evocation of the country and its people” by the New York Times) and The Book of Crows. His latest novel, The Afterlives of Dr Gachet was given an Authors Award by the UK Society of Authors. His volume of poetry, The Bestiary, was short-listed for an Eric Gregory Award, and on its strength, he was included in the major anthology of new British poets from Bloodaxe (Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets). He has read and performed his work at literary festivals around the world, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Jaipur Literary Festival, the Ullapool Book Festival, and the South Downs Poetry Festival. He was chosen to be the poet in residence in Bunhill Fields (the burial place of the great mystic poet William Blake) as part of the Poetry School’s contribution to the Mixed Borders London Festival. His creative writing has been featured on the BBC, in The Independent, on Arena on Radio 1, and in National Geographic.

Meekings is also a scholar in the practices and processes of creative writing. With Dr. Marshall Moore, he is the co-editor of four edited volumes: The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century: Practical Strategies for a Modern Era (Bloomsbury, 2026); The Scholarship of Creative Writing Practice: Beyond Craft, Pedagogy and the Academy (Bloomsbury, 2024); Practice, Praxis, Print: Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade (Routledge, 2022); and The Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2022). He has published peer-reviewed academic articles in the top journals in his field as well as contributing several chapters to academic books. He serves on the editorial board for Bloomsbury’s ‘Research in Creative Writing’ series and recently received a Provost Grant for his current project exploring barriers to creative writing among students in the region. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Teaching

• Introduction to Creative Writing
• Memoir: Identity & Belonging
• Reading and Writing Short Fiction
• Poetry
• First Year Writing 1 & 2

Publications

BOOKS 

Meekings, S. (2026). Wonder and Loss: A Practical Memoir for Writing about Grief. London: Bloomsbury. 

Markle, A., Moore, M. and Meekings, S. (eds). (2026). The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century: Practical Strategies for a Modern Era. London: Bloomsbury. 

Moore, M. and Meekings, S. (eds.). (2024). The Scholarship of Creative Writing Practice: Beyond Craft, Pedagogy and the Academy. London: Bloomsbury.

Meekings, S and Moore, M. (Eds). (2021). Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade: Practice, Praxis, Print. London: Routledge. 

Moore, M. and Meekings, S. (Eds). (2021). The Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury. 

Meekings, S. (2018). The Afterlives of Dr Gachet. London: Eyewear Press.

Meekings, S. (2016). The Other Shore. London: Eyewear Press.

Meekings, S. (2011). The Book of Crows. Edinburgh: Polygon. 

Meekings, S. (2010). Under Fishbone Clouds. New York: Macmillan.

Meekings, S. (2008). The Bestiary. Edinburgh: Polygon.

Selected Articles, Book Chapters and Creative Works

Meekings, S. (2026). “‘AI Won’t Eat Your Brain: New Taxonomies & Opportunities for the Creative Writing Classroom.” New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790726.2026.2701206 .

Perkins, J. D., and Meekings, S. (2025). “Mapping change in self narrative after prolonged exposure therapy: An exploration in recovery from functional dissociative seizures.” Epilepsy and Behaviour Reports, Vol 31: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebr.2025.100812

Meekings, S. (2025). “10 Ways of Thinking About the Body.” The Linden Review. Spring issue. https://www.lindenreview.com/meekings-ten-ways 

Meekings, S. (2024). Knowing Where to Start: Exploring Narrative Beginnings Inside and Outside the Creative Writing Classroom. Writing and Pedagogy. Vol. 15, 3. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.22457

Meekings, S. (2024). “Writing and Anxiety: What Are Writers When They're Not Writing?” The Scholarship of Creative Writing Practice: Beyond Craft, Pedagogy and the Academy. London: Bloomsbury. pp.143-152. 

Meekings, S., Assaf, L., Gwiza, T., Kazim, T. and Mubasha, L. (2023). Barriers to Creative Writing Among University Students in Qatar. Journal of Creative Writing Studies. Vol. 8, 1. https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol8/iss1/5/

Meekings, S. (2023). A Fist of Muscle. Best American Essays 2023. New York: HarperCollins.

Meekings, S. (2023). For A Long Time Now I Have Been Burning. Creative Writing Responses to Images of the Living Brain. Melbourne: Australasian Association of Writing Programs.

Meekings, S. (2021). Utilizing Digital Literacy in the Creative Writing Classroom. Journal of Creative Writing Studies. 6.1.2021. ISSN: 2474-2937. https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol6/iss1/11 

Meekings, S. (2021).“Against Entropy. In The Incompleteness Book II: Writing Back and Thinking Forward, ed. Jen Webb, Julia Prendergast, and Eileen Herbert-Goodall. Canberra: Recent Work Press.

Meekings, S. (2020). Remote Learning and Maintaining Collaborative Student Writing. Writing in Education. 81.3. pp.18-21. 

Meekings, S. (2020). Telephone Lines. Together…Apart. HBKU Press.

Meekings, S. (2020). We Live Every Moment Many Times. Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Spring (1). Western New Mexico University. 

Meekings, S. (2019). Writing through Loss: The Rise of Grief Narratives through the Lens of Linville’s Self-complexity Theory. Life Writing. 16, 2.

Meekings, S. (2019). Writing Ghostly Spaces: Place as Palimpsest. Writing as Spaces: Writing as Transformative, Scholarly and Creative Practice. Ed. Ekaterina Midgette. Leiden: BRILL.

Meekings, S. (2019). Writing Backwards: Adventures with Time and Structure in Life Writing. How Stories Teach Us: Composition, Life Writing, and Blended Scholarship. Ed. Amy E. Robillard. Oxford: Peter Lang. pp.77-90. 

Meekings, S. (2019). The Goblin Woods. Bacopa Literary Review. 11: 2019 (September), pp. 43-49.

Meekings, S. (2019). The Way Through the Labyrinth. Kestrel Journal of Literature and Art. 40.1. Winter

Meekings, S. (2018). Eel Cartography and Eel Country. The Creel: An Anthology. Falmouth: Guillemot Press.

Meekings, S. (2018). The Standard Advice. TEXT A Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. 22.1.

Meekings, S. (2018). How My Brother Joined the Red-Headed League. New Texas Journal. 2.1.

Meekings, S. (2018). Instagram Narratives. Digital English: An Open Access Online Handbook for Tertiary English Educators. Ed. Dr. Naomi Milthorpe. University of Tasmania. www.digitalenglish.com.au

Meekings, S. (2017). Circling a Subject: Chasing Happiness in Creative Practice. New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. 14.3.1.

Meekings, S. (2017). Writing the Real: The Use of Primary and Secondary Sources in Creative Writing Research. Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research. Issue 3.

Awards and Grants

Buffet Global Collaboration Grant: “Intersections between Storytelling and Pathology in Narrative Medicine”, 2024.

Provost Faculty Grants for Research in Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts: Barriers to Beginning: Local, Cultural, and Colonial Impediments to Creative Writing in Qatar (2021).

UREP grant (24-214-3-058): Keep Them Safe: A Child Car Seats Persuasive Campaign (2019).

Authors’ Foundation award for creative writing research, the Society of Authors (2016).

Eric Gregory Trust Fund Award, shortlisted author, the Society of Authors (2007)