Gerda Pearce attended the Advanced course while working on her first and second novels. Her novel, Long Lies the Shadow, was published by Maia/Arcadia in 2011 and in French translation by Marabout in 2014 under the title Dans un Dernier Souffle (In a Last Breath). Gerda recently completed an MA in Creative Writing with distinction, and was awarded the LBSU Postgraduate Prize for Culture, Writing and Performance.