Artist & Writer In Residence 2009-10

Artist in Residence - Subathra Subramaniam

Suba is a choreographer and one of the foremost Bharat Natyam dancers in England, and is also a qualified Science teacher and is currently completing an MA in Education. She is an Education Director, working on Cape Farewell's youth programme. Suba began her dance training in Malaysia and completed it under Prakash Yadagudde at The Bhavan Centre, London where she successfully staged her Arangetram in 1993.

Performances include a number of productions at The Bhavan Centre with the National Youth South Asian Dance Company; and as a finalist in the New York Indian Dance Show (1993). Suba toured nationally with Srishti Dance Creation's production Hidden Forces. In 1997 she was involved in a choreographic lab held by Sampad and was Dancer in Education for Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, 1995. Suba carried out extensive dance workshops in schools, colleges and universities. In September 2003, Suba was a choreographer and performer at the "24 hour performance" in Copenhagen directed by Stuart Lynch of Paradance.

Writer in Residence - Jean McNeil

Jean grew up on Cape Breton Island. She studied at the University of Toronto and University College, London. She has lived for much of the last sixteen years in London, though travelling extensively in Latin America, and most recently to the Antarctic. Her published novels include Hunting Down Home, Private View and The Interpreter of Silences. She has taught at the Arvon Foundation and currently teaches on the MA in creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. The Antarctic is the setting for Jean McNeil's new novel, The Ice Lovers.
In 2005/6 Jean McNeil was a British Antarctic Survey/Arts Council fellow in Antarctica. Jean has been compared to Annie Proulx and Alastair MacLeod. She was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in Canada 2003; was the winner of the Prism International Fiction Competition 1997; and received a New London Writers Award from the London Arts Board in 1997.