Shoreham Port's very first writer in residence

“It is something that I proposed to them having seen similar schemes in other places and in other ports around the country,” says Christy who teaches English at Lancing College and has a DPhil from Oxford.

“Usually writers in residence are in cottages or libraries but this feels like a great opportunity to be in this industrial setting. I took a lot of trains along the coast or was driving along the roads and it felt such a dominant part of the coastline. And it seemed so eloquent. I was intrigued. Buildings do speak to us. We're used to finding the natural landscape speaking to us especially the South Downs and the sea but there's something very resonant about this built area that has two and a half centuries of history behind it or however long. And there is also something so intriguing about the way that it interacts with the natural landscape.

“I plan to go to the port at least once a week and sit in a cafe or walk around and see what it generates. I was inspired in particular by the relationship that the port seems to have inspired with sound artists who take their recording equipment along and pick up what comes up. I'm trying to do something similar with language. I don't know what it will generate but I imagine over the course of the year, something will happen whether it be fiction or an essay or a longer form.

“I started in the second week in January and I expect I will be going there little bit more often in the summer when my schedule will be a bit more free. I'm hoping to wander around the site at night and I would love to speak to people. And I would love to do several workshops in the summer with local writers, people that have found that the place speaks to them and then perhaps it would be nice to do something similar at the end of the residency.

“I have an academic background but research can be a way of avoiding the terrible not knowing. My temptation is initially to go and look at books but what I really particularly want to do is to speak to people.”

Lancing College are right behind her: “They have been very supportive and there are a lot of very keen creative writers at the college so it would be nice to take some of the students along perhaps one day.”

Christy, who has been at Lancing since 2019, grew up in South Africa but her parents are American: “Place is very important to me. I think the quality of your life and the person that you emerge as has a relationship with your geography. I suppose as somebody that is an outsider or is not rooted in a place, it makes it quite interesting to see people become rooted and that's one of the things I would like to explore.”

Christy’s first novel, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, was published by Granta in 2023, and her writing has appeared in the Southern Review, The Stinging Fly and online at The Guardian. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement.