Mez Packer
My research vision
My research interests focus on storytelling through creative writing, transmedia delivery and interactivity. My work is inspired by a wide spectrum of interests from traditional storytelling (including folklore, family and oral histories) to the impact of new technologies and human/machine interactions and how narrative can be articulated across platforms. In my creative writing I am concerned with gender and social politics, racism, social entropy, dystopia, imagined worlds and identity.
Biography
Mez Packer has worked as a media professional for more than twenty years. At the BBC she was an online journalist and she continues her work as an interactive consultant with expertise in content production and interface design. She has been a magazine editor, a director of an arts organisation and run an Internet design business.
Senior Lecturer Interactive Media
Visiting Lecturer Creative Writing
Building: Ellen Terry
Room: ETB06
Email: m.packer@coventry.ac.uk
Most recently she has created narratives for interactive works and installations including smart phone apps (for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) and various multi-platform projects. Reliable Witness - an ambitious immersive, transmedia piece - was ACE funded and created in collaboration with the Birmingham Book Festival. In addition Mez is a creative writer and has published two novels and several short stories. Her first novel, Among Thieves, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010. The Game is Altered was published in 2012 and is being reissued in paperback in September 2013. Mez has also written for numerous online and print magazines and is currently writing her fourth novel alongside her teaching and interactive technologies practice.
Selected outputs
- Packer, M. (2009) Among Thieves. Birmingham: Tindal Street Press
- Packer, M. (2012) The Game is Altered. Birmingham: Tindal Street Press
- Packer, M. (2012) 'The Donkey'. Under the Radar 10,44-57
- Packer, M. (2013) 'Mr Spider'. In The Sea in Birmingham. Ed. by Arnold, G., and Bell, J. Birmingham: TSFG Press, 2-15
- Packer, M. (2012) Techno-phobia and the modern writer. Internet publication.
- Packer, M. (2012) Factual errors: When is recreating real life on the page not okay? Internet publication.
- Packer, M. (2010) Blurred Edges: Multicultural Fiction and the Role of the White Author.Internet publication.
- Packer, M. (2010) Translating transmedia. Internet publication.
Selected projects
- Reliable Witness (2012): A commissioned transmedia installation funded by ACE and exhibited in partnership with the Birmingham Book Festival.
- Eye Shakespeare (2012): Innovative, smart phone app uniquely showcasing the treasures of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
