A special evening celebrating the power of creative writing to foster empathy, understanding and connection.

Join the Centre for New Writing, the Empathic Healthcare Society, and the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare for a special evening celebrating the power of creative writing to foster empathy, understanding and connection. Award-winning poet, performer and storyteller Rob Gee and author Jonathan Taylor will appear in conversation to explore the relationship between writing and empathy.

The event celebrates the Anthony Locke Empathic Healthcare Prizes for Creative Writing, recognising outstanding writing that engages with themes of compassion, understanding, care and human experience. Following a talk by Rob and Jonathan, we’ll have a reading of some of the brilliant entries to the competition.

Whether you are a creative writer, healthcare professional, student, or reader, you’re welcome – we will celebrate the role of creativity in helping us understand one another.

Award-winning poet, performer and storyteller Rob Gee and author Jonathan Taylor will appear in conversation to explore the relationship between writing and empathy.

The event celebrates the Anthony Locke Empathic Healthcare Prizes for Creative Writing, recognising outstanding writing that engages with themes of compassion, understanding, care and human experience. Following a talk by Rob and Jonathan, we’ll have a reading of some of the brilliant entries to the competition.

Whether you are a creative writer, healthcare professional, student, or reader, you’re welcome – we will celebrate the role of creativity in helping us understand one another.

About the Speakers

Rob Gee is a comic, poet, and ex- mental health nurse with over a decade of clinical experience. He has won over twenty awards for his solo shows and triumphed in major poetry slams, including the Edinburgh Slam and BBC Two's Why Poetry Matters Slam. He has performed over 3,000 shows globally, including at more than 100 international fringe festivals. He serves as patron for the Leicestershire Action for Mental Health Project (LAMP) and spent 12 years as the lead artist for Comedy Asylum, which runs comedy workshops and shows for individuals with severe mental illness. Shows include Forget Me Not: The Alzheimer's Whodunnit and AWOL: Two old men escape from a care home and go to a metal festival: he has published numerous books of poetry and edited anthologies celebrating the power of poetry for wellbeing.

Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor and critic. He is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and author of prize-winning novels, short story collections, and memoirs, including the beautifully empathic works of life-writing Take Me Home: Parkinson’s, My Father, Myself (Granta Books, 2007) and A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024).

About the Prizes

In summer 2026 we ran a creative writing competition open to all medical and healthcare students at the University of Leicester, with prizes kindly sponsored by Anthony Locke, and the Centre for New Writing, University of Leicester. The prize was judged by a committee including students from the Empathic Healthcare Society, Dr Jonathan Taylor, Dr Andy Ward, Dr Felicity James and Dr Rachel Winter.

The range of entries – moving, tender and empathic – showed how talented and expressive our students are. We’ll have a presentation of prize certificates but all the entries deserve to be celebrated - the talk will be followed by a reading of a sample of the great short prose pieces and poems entered.

This forms part of our larger conversation around the literary arts and healthcare, funded by the AHRC as part of the Empathy, Difficulty, Difference: Creative Curiosity in Practice project.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande (https://unsplash.com/@iamtru?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/person-doing-wall-graffiti-wDJrBpl-q3Q?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

Description supplied by the event organiser.