The Benford Plagiarism Dossier 06

Begin forwarded message:

From: Alex Keegan
Subject: At least 11 Years Plagiarism of Fiction by Current Open University Tutor
Date: 13 June 2012 12:04:14 GMT+01:00
T

My name is Alex Keegan.

I am the author of five published novels, a collection of short stories
and approximately 400 total publications. I have won 13 First prizes
for short fiction and two First Prizes for poetry.

I have taught Creative Writing for 20 years and my students have had at least 142 First Prizes
(141 while with me) and many more after leaving. "Boot Campers" have published more than 40 books.

Monica Ali was in BC for 9 months, Vanessa Gebbie, Alexandra Fox etc



Yesterday a student contacted me to say one of my stories

Postcards From BalloonLand was being plagiarised (an exact cut-and-past copy, same title, everything) and was being sold at Amazon.

Further investigation has revealed that my work is in THREE separate publications
and is being sold at Amazon, the Apple iBooks Store, Lulu.com and via Facebook and possibly SONY.



It now turns out that this "author" has ripped off myself, J. D. Beresford, William F. Prime,
Aleister Crowley, and Dylan Thomas.

No doubt there will be more instances. This has been unearthed in 12 hours.

These are not "snippets" but mostly complete rip-offs, word-for-word. In the case of Dylan Thomas,
this "author" has simply put her own cover, title and author name on a full BOOK by DT!






Normally I would simply put a stop to this theft and forget it but the author turns out to be Dr Joanne Benford, based in Hartlepool, and who was until recently teaching Creative Writing at The da Vinci Centre, Tunstall College and is currently an Open University Tutor in the North-East and has been in the post for 8.5 years.

The Tutor's "Official Blurb" includes part of my work!


The OU takes a very serious view against plagiarism by students.

I have provenance for my own story (1991, 1995) (she claims copyright 1995) and I can provide numerous links to the evidence if you would care to look into this further


My Telephone is


Best Wishes


Alex Keegan

Newbury Berkshire