Dr Steve Ely is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Director of the Ted Hughes Network.  He is an award-winning poet, novelist, and biographer.  He joined the University in September 2015 after a twenty-year career in secondary education as a teacher, senior leader and Headteacher.  He has also worked as a freelance writer and educational consultant.  Steve is a founding member and former chair of the Ted Hughes Project (South Yorkshire) a community-based organisation which seeks to develop the legacy of Ted Hughes in and around Hughes’s childhood home of Mexborough and which runs the annual Ted Hughes Poetry Festival. He's currently working on a number of creative projects - poetry, short-stories, a novel and an extended essay - all of which circle around the same knot of themes and content: nature, the anthropocene, class, capitalism, resistance and violence.  He's also researching into Ted Hughes's small press and limited edition work.