by Tanya Reed

Ann Shearer, Imperial's first Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow pictured below, left last month to return to her own writing and her analytical practice. In her two years at College, she has helped more than 100 individual students with their written English, as well as groups and academic and non-academic staff.

"I've really enjoyed working with young people, especially their lively minds and their energy," she said. "Those I met all wanted to learn. They came to me wanting to improve the planning and structure of their written work, as well as its style, whether their first language was English or not. My work with them has been very rewarding."

One of 55 writers in 38 British universities and colleges sponsored by the Royal Literary Fund, Ann was a reporter and page editor of the Guardian and is a Jungian analyst and author of eight books.

Income for the Royal Literary Fund increased tenfold due to bequests of copyrights from novelist W Somerset Maugham and royalties from the works of A A Milne. The Fund then set up a pilot project to support ventures in public education.

Ann provided a series of 10 workshops for PhD students in the graduate school of life sciences and medicine, together with outside consultant, Louise Baron.

"I also worked a lot with groups, particularly the first year engineering in context group," she concluded. "People seemed to find it helpful and some individuals also came to me several times.

It was very interesting to watch an entire elaborate group report come together and I much admired the hard work that went into the final achievement."

The next RLF Writing Fellow, also pictured, is writer Aamer Hussein, who arrives in October 2003.