Literature Unlocked

My name is Dr Alex Carabine. Despite my rather impressive-sounding title, I’m actually a working-class woman from Liverpool. I attended a comprehensive secondary school where a sixth-form Goth girl was stabbed in the leg between lessons, and I never thought university would be for me. I had no confidence in my abilities, and, growing up in the shadow of Thatcher, no real optimism for my future.

What I had was a desperate love of books. It’s clichéd, I know. But libraries were free, and safe, and I could lose myself between shelves that smelled like vanilla-dust and synthetic carpet fibres.

But university? No. I tried art college and dropped out – twice. Aged 18, I travelled alone around Europe on savings from the compensation I received for a car accident that happened when I was 10. Second-hand classics were cheapest while travelling. So, I read The Turn of the Screw in Prague, Wuthering Heights in Vienna. I bought a battered copy of Dracula in Budapest to read as I crossed over the border into Transylvania. After my first night in Sighișoara (birthplace of Vlad the Impaler), I awoke with two bite marks on my neck. I was delighted, even though they were just wounds from the bedbugs of the hostel I was staying in.

So you see, books – especially Gothic books – have been my constant companions.

I came home. I drifted and I struggled. Eventually I became assistant manager of an esoteric bookshop in Liverpool. I loved it. The calm of the morning before the customers wandered in. The fairy lights and choir music at Christmas. But I knew its limitations. I would never inherit the business, and the manager was getting older. I guessed that she would retire, or the shop (which was never lucrative) would go under. And so I would find myself – perhaps in my forties – with nothing to fall back on except for a decade and a half of customer service. That thought frightened me.

Then, I read Jane Eyre for the first time. It was weird, and complicated, and had all the urgency of gossip. I was desperate to talk to someone about it, but none of my loved ones had read it before. It’s a strange and lonely feeling, to love a book alone.

Seeing the caps and gowns of graduating students filled me with a sickening sensation of guilt and anxiety. I needed to change my life, and I thought nothing could shake it up more thoroughly than a degree. One night, on the bus home, I googled Access to University courses on my phone. I found one at the University of Liverpool.

I was 27 when I became a first year. I was 30 when I graduated, becoming the first in my family to gain a degree. I loved it so much I stayed. And stayed again.

“I plan on lingering here so long that by the time I get my PhD they’ll just start paying me!” I laughed to friends.

It’s not been quite that simple, though. Despite my love of academia, my experiences as a working-class student and academic have forced me to acknowledge that universities are inaccessible to many. I was so proud of by bootstraps that I didn’t notice the insane mental and emotional cost of pulling myself up by them. Until, that is, the bootstraps snapped.

But I’m not done with academia. Universities are hard to access for those of us from diverse backgrounds, but the benefits are so worthwhile. There are so many of us finding solace in books.

This is why I created Literature Unlocked. Universities are known as the Ivory Tower, a place of privileged seclusion where people can avoid the unpleasant practicalities of life. Now, to be clear, I am not saying academics shy away from the real world. But the system of academia? It predominantly benefits the wealthy, the able and the white. Even now universities are still struggling with this legacy of systemic biases.

And so here I am. A headstrong and wayward woman, determined to unlock the libraries and bring academic research out of the Ivory Tower.

As a freelance academic, I aim to begin a movement that makes literature and university-style education accessible to as many people as possible. My workshops, book clubs and seminar groups will foster friendships, improve well-being and encourage deep conversations.

All this, and no essays.

So join me, dear readers. Either on social media or in one of my workshops. Let me bring academia to you so that you can acces the research and reading that’s been kept from you.

You are so welcome here.