"I think our students are the greatest source of inspiration. We learn from them a great deal more than we probably manage to teach them. In many ways, it's an amazing thing to be able to teach. It's a great responsibility, but it's also an enormous opportunity. And although I'm not teaching at the moment, that's why I'm missing it, I suppose. And that impulse, the desire that is there in teaching to talk to people, but also to listen to people is something that I never stop valuing and appreciating.When academics end their careers, generally speaking, they're never asked to give a final lecture or to kind of attempt to sum up what they've learned or what they've understood or what they've most appreciated, or what they've been most moved by in their years of teaching. I suppose the creative is essentially to do with the unforeseeable. I think it's so much to do with chance, with what you don't see coming, and what turns out or what befalls."Nicholas Royle is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Sussex, England, where he has been based since 1999. He has also taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Tampere, and the University of Stirling; and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Århus, Santiago del Compostela, Turku, Manitoba, and Lille. He is a managing editor of the Oxford Literary Review and director of Quick Fictions. He has published many books, including Telepathy and Literature, E.M. Forster, Jacques Derrida, The Uncanny, Veering: A Theory of Literature, How to Read Shakespeare, and Hélène Cixous: Dreamer, Realist, Analyst, Writing, as well as the novels Quilt and An English Guide to Birdwatching, and Mother: A Memoir. In addition, he is co-author with Andrew Bennett of three books: Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, and An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory Sixth edition, 2023. Royle’s current projects include a detective novel, a collection of essays about new approaches to narrative theory, and a collaborative work with Timothy Morton on Covid-19. His latest book, David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine, is due to be published in November 2023.www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Literature-Criticism-and-Theory/Bennett-Royle/p/book/9781032158846 https://myriadeditions.com/creator/nicholas-royle/ https://quickfiction.co.uk/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast