Dr Andrea Mason

Biography

Dr Andrea Mason is a Senior Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies at London College of Communication, UAL. She is a writer and artist with an ecological focus. Her practice-based research looks at material and embodied practices, with a particular focus on writing ecologies: the expanded field of fiction, collaboration, curation and art as an act of ecological citizenry.

She is a graduate of the prestigious UEA Creative Writing MA, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, where she explored the impact of art practice on creative writing. She also holds an MSc in Environment & Sustainable Development.

She has undertaken a number of socially-engaged art commissions including Art U Need, Thames Gateway South East Essex, 2006/7, and was inaugural artist-in-residence for Making Play, South London Gallery, 2008. She has also worked with Tate Regeneration and Home.

Andrea's fiction pamphlet Waste Extractions was published at Broken Sleep Books, July 2022.

Andrea is Runner Up in the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, 2023. She was shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize (2020) and is the winner of The Aleph Writing Prize (2020). Her novel The Cremation Project was shortlisted for the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize (2018) and longlisted for the Dzanc Books Fiction Prize (2018). Individual chapters have appeared at: 3: AM Magazine, and UEA New Writing.

Andrea's current research focus is a body of work – writing and art – about waste. This activity is supported by an Arts Council DYCP Round 8 grant as well as a UAL sabbatical in 2024. Related fiction extracts have appeared to date in 22 Fictions: New Writing from Desperate Literature & Brick Lane Bookshop (ed. Kate Ellis & Robert Loyko-Greer), Cybernetics or Ghosts? Stories From Myth to A.I., (ed. Michael Salu), Failed States Journal, Tar Press, Sublunary Editions, Seen From Here: Writing in the Lockdown, Mega City Fictions and Otoliths. Related art pieces have been included in Thirty-one years of Piece of Paper Press at Matts Gallery, London, The Wastemakers on Cornucopia Street at Newhaven Art Projects and Now It Is Permitted: 24 Wayside Pulpits, curated by Bridget Smith as part of her residency at Swedenborg Society.