I have published four novels (Blue Fruit (1987), The Burnt House (1989), The Snail (1991) and Sing the Body Electric (1993)), short stories (my story "Voyage was included in Best British Short Stories 2013 (Salt)) and non-fiction (including Democracy in Britain: A Reader (1994) and Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination (1998)). I have taught at Royal Holloway College and the University of Westminster, and as part of the Arts Council's "Writers in Prisons" project. My PhD, "Mediation and Dynamics in the Experience of Narrative Fiction", proposes a new theory of narrative fiction from the perspective of contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind. In addition to this writing and teaching, I have worked in the past as a Producer of TV and radio documentaries, and am a regular reviewer of contemporary fiction in the national press.
I teach the following modules:
I am currently working on a collection of interlinked short stories.
My academic research is concerned with the implications of contemporary ideas of embodied and distributed cognition for the study of literature and aesthetics, with a special focus on the modernist period.
Journal Articles/Book Chapters:
Academic/Non-fiction Books:
Fiction:
I have also published short stories in anthologies and journals, including "Voyage" in Best British Short Stories 2013 (Salt) and Stand Volume 11(1) (2012).
Also, I have delivered papers at a number of international academic conferences and symposia, including Cognitive Futures in the Humanities (Bangor and Durham), European Narratology Network (Paris), History of Distributed Cognition (University of Edinburgh), Narrating Complexity (York), 100 Myles: International Flann O'Brien Centenary Conference (Vienna) and Joycean Literatures (University of London School of Advanced Studies).
Lively, Adam (2020) Directionality and duration in distributed consciousness: modernist perspectives on photographic objectivity. In: Distributed Cognition in Victorian Culture and Modernism. Anderson, Miranda and Garratt, Peter and Sprevak, Mark , eds. The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition, 4 . Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474442244
Lively, Adam (2018) Closure, observation and coupling: on narrative and autopoiesis. In: Narrating Complexity. Walsh, Richard and Stepney, Susan , eds. Springer, pp. 85-100. ISBN 9783319647128
Lively, Adam (2016) Joint attention, semiotic mediation and literary narrative. Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication , 37 (4). pp. 517-538. ISSN 0333-5372
In 2015 I conducted a study-day for the general public at Morley College titled "Narrative: A World of Story". In 2016 I am giving a series of classes at the British Library in association with their exhibition on Lewis Carroll's Alice books. In 2012 I gave a series lectures and seminars on contemporary British fiction for the Oxford Russia Fund at the Karelian State Pedagogical Academy, Petrozavodsk and Herzen State Pedagogical University,St Petersburg. I have also given talks at the Edinburgh and Cheltenham literary festivals, and been a contributor to programmes on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and the BBC World Service.
