Charlotte Byrne

Profile

I am a novelist and am currently undertaking an interdisciplinary Creative Writing PhD (Remembering Queer Catalan Women in Anglophone Fiction of the Spanish Civil War) with the School of English and Drama and the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary. This project engages with archival research and literary studies, as well as theories of translation and memory.

I have experience in teaching Creative Writing and modules on Iberian cultures (Catalan and Spanish).

Teaching

I am currently convenor and tutor of CAT4011/COM5011 (Catalan Culture: Art, Literature and Football).

I have taught on the following modules at Queen Mary in previous years:

SML4006: Culture and Language (Spanish Group)

ESH4100: Creative Writing I

ESH5103: Creative Writing (Prose)

I also have experience of supervising undergraduate dissertations in SED (ESH6199: Creative Writing Dissertation).

Research

Research Interests:

My current PhD project is entitled Remembering Queer Catalan Women in Anglophone Fiction of the Spanish Civil War. Using a practice as research methodology, the project consists of writing a historical novel that explores the lesbian experience in 1930s Spain with a Catalan focus and aims to render this period of history accessible for anglophone audiences, while also serving as a pseudo-memoir that writes a narrative that was present but remained undocumented.  

I am especially interested in mid-twentieth century Catalan women’s writing, but my research interests are eclectic. They include, but are by no means limited to:

• Twentieth-century Spanish women’s writing
• Autobiography and memoir
• Anarchism
• Corporality
• Postmemory
• Translation
• La Movida Madrileña
• The films of Almodóvar, Trueba, and Saura
• Art and visual narratives
• Horror
• Writing for young audiences

Publications

Articles and book reviews  

‘A queer problem: writing sapphic anarchism in Spanish Civil War fiction’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 29: 3 (2023) 381-402; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14701847.2023.2282837

‘“Miss Spain in Exile”: Isa Reyes’ Escape from the Spanish Civil War’, Hispanic Research Journal, 23: 4 (2022) 359-60; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2023.2217012

‘Acción y voces de mujer en el espacio público’, Hispanic Research Journal, 22.6 (2021) 659-61; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2022.2079863

‘Women Political Prisoners After the Spanish Civil War: Narratives of Resistance and Survival’, Hispanic Research Journal, 22.2 (2021) 240-42; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2021.2030560

‘The Illusion of Statehood: Perceptions of Catalan Independence up to the End of the Spanish Civil War’, Hispanic Research Journal, 21.4 (2020) 470-71; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2020.1893042

‘My Mother, That Stranger: Letters from the Spanish Civil War’, Hispanic Research Journal, 21.3 (2020) 344–45; DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2020.1874753

Novels and short stories

‘The Assassination of Lady Carlyle’ in Brass, Blimps and Bots (Crystal Peake Publisher, 2022)

Folked Up (Crystal Peake Publisher, 2020)

‘Conjuring the Man’ in First Came Fear (New Lit Salon Press, 2018)

‘Georgy Girl’ in In Which Dragons Are Real But (Fincham Press, 2018)

‘Sardines’ and ‘Not Tonight’ in Purple Lights (Fincham Press, 2016)

‘Éramos soldados’ in Cuentos del mundo (DualBooks, 2013)