Novelist and professor Toibin to leave for University of Manchester

Toibin’s appointment to the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing coincides with the departure of Martin Amis, a high-profile novelist whom many have credited with bringing a great deal of attention to the center.

Toibin is an award-winning Irish writer of novels and short stories. His 2009 novel “Brooklyn” received the Costa Novel Award, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary awards. A visiting professor at the University since 2009, Toibin has taught a seminar focusing on Irish literature every spring along with introductory fiction courses. This term he is teaching a seminar on the formation of Irish modernism.

Paul Muldoon, the chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts, said he regretted Toibin’s departure. “He’s been a wonderfully vital member of the program. We’ll miss him hugely,” Muldoon said in an e-mail.

Toibin himself declined to comment but said he would only be going to Manchester for one semester.

At the Univesity of Manchester, Toibin will teach a fiction workshop for students in the master’s program in creative writing as well as a new course called Arts for Writers.

Toibin’s own brainchild, Arts for Writers will bring artists in mediums including theater, music and visual arts into the seminar room to explore the influence of other arts on his students’ writing. As Amis did, Toibin will host four public events during the semester.

John McAuliffe, co-director of the Centre for New Writing, described Toibin as “a brilliant teacher” and expressed special hope for Arts for Writers as “a very revealing and helpful course for students in our graduate program.”

“We’re already planning the public events he will run at Manchester, and I think they will generate a lot of interest and discussion,” McAuliffe said in an e-mail. “I think [Toibin] has some of the same commitments as a writer like Martin Amis. He is a stylist, a writer of terrific and distinctive sentences, but he’s also someone who is willing to stake a claim for literature and the arts’ importance in the 21st century.”

Toibin’s predecessor Amis is an award-winning novelist named one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 by The Times of London. Amis is leaving Manchester at the expiration of his four-year tenure “purely for family reasons,” and is returning to his wife’s hometown, New York.

McAuliffe credited Amis for raising the center’s profile, citing a 100 percent increase in applications to the creative writing program since Amis’ appointment in 2007.

“Maybe Martin’s biggest contribution was the series of events he ran at big venues in the university and in downtown Manchester,” McAuliffe said. “I think they have also started new discussions — about the role of the contemporary writer, about how we talk about literature inside and outside the university.”

Amis’ appointment, his first-ever teaching post, caused a stir when the Centre for New Writing announced his 80,000 pound salary, which equaled nearly $160,000 in 2007.