Dr Jon Day

I joined King’s in 2014 after completing a DPhil on modernist fiction, neurology and philosophy of mind at St John’s College, Oxford, where I also studied for my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

I have written two works of creative non-fiction: Cyclogeography (Notting Hill Editions, 2015), about bicycles, landscapes, and my time as a cycle courier; and Homing (John Murray, 2019), about pigeons, places, and the idea of home. A Twitch Upon the Thread, an anthology of fishing writing, was published in 2019. I write regularly for national newspapers and internationally recognised literary journals.

My monograph, Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia, explores the philosophical problem of qualia in relation to modernist fiction. It will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Modernism, especially prose fiction
• Philosophy of mind/histories of consciousness
• Neurology and the history of medicine
• Urban studies
• Contemporary Anglo-American fiction
• Flann O’Brien
• Creative non-fiction
• Place writing
• Eco-humanities

As well as my academic work within modernist studies, I am involved with teaching creative writing at King’s. I am keen to hear from potential PhD students working  on creative non fiction projects. For more details, please see my full research profile.

Teaching

I contribute teaching to or convene the following courses at King’s:

• 7AAEM732 Modernist Mindscapes
• 7AAEM605 The 20th Century City: From Modernity to Postmodernity
• 7AAEM659 Themes in the Medical Humanities
• 6AAEC062 Modernist Short Story
• 5AAEB083 The Mind of the Novel
• 5AAEB065 Creative Non-fiction
• 4AAEA003 Reading Poetry

Expertise and Public Engagement

My essays and reviews appear regularly in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, Bookforum, n+1, the White Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times, the Guardian and Observer, the Telegraph and many others.

I write about art for Apollo, and have contributed to programmes on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. I was a judge for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, and the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize.

I am an enthusiastic volunteer with Speakers for Schools.

Selected publications

• Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia (EUP, 2020)
• Homing (John Murray, 2019)
• A Twitch Upon the Thread: Writers of Fishing (Notting Hill Editions, 2019)
• Cyclogeography (Notting Hill Editions, 2019)