Writing School East Midlands Spring Programme 2015

Leicester

Creative Writing Courses

January – April 2015 Beginnings, Middles & Endings with Alison Moore and courses with

Polly Tuckett

Rod Duncan

Poetry Workshop with Mimi Khalvati and courses with

Maxine Linnell

Lydia Towsey

Book online at www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk Writing School East Midlands – The Writing School in Leicester and Nottingham builds on 60 years of experience to provide courses, workshops and events to help writers of all abilities to develop their own work.

Make time for writing Welcome to Writing School East Midlands: Leicester Founded over sixty years ago Writing School Leicester, now with the support of Writing East Midlands, has blossomed in the last few years into Writing School East Midlands with bases in Leicester and Nottingham. Our new programme of courses, workshops and special events reflects the Writing School’s commitment to providing excellent tuition in a supportive and creative environment, and we welcome writers of all abilities regardless of experience and academic qualifications.

Our tutors are not only celebrated writers and performers in their own right, but accomplished teachers acknowledged for their skills and ability to work with a broad spectrum of readers and writers across a range of genres and forms, including novel writing, short fiction, memoir and poetry. Our Leicester tutors are: Rod Duncan, Maxine Linnell, Polly Tuckett, and, new to Writing School Leicester, Alison Moore and Lydia Towsey.

Our Special Events programme offers wonderful opportunities to work with distinguished visiting writers from across the country. This season’s programme includes Mimi Khalvati and David Constantine. Previous guest tutors have included Rob Gee, Joel Stickley and Farhana Shaikh.

We’re delighted to be working with new creative partners and venues in Leicester including: The Y, Phoenix Square Arts Centre, Embrace Arts, LCB Depot and Lyric Lounge Leicester. We look forward to building on a new publishing partnership with Brittle Star magazine and would like to thank Pewter Rose Press for its continued support of The Writing School Anthology.

And we give very warm thanks to Leicester Adult Education College for all the support it has given us over the years.

Writing East Midlands administrates Writing School East Midlands and is a not-for-profit organisation supported by Arts Council England.

Courses Novel Writing Workshop with Rod Duncan

Writing Workshop 2 with Maxine Linnell

8 Week Course Day & Time: Tuesdays 7.15pm – 9.15pm Date: 20 January – 17 March (no session 17 Feb.) Where: Phoenix Arts Centre, 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG Cost: £128, £104 conc.* Booking code: WSL1502

4 Week Course Day & Time: Wednesdays 10am – 12pm Date: 25 February – 18 March Where: LCB Depot, 31 Rutland Street, Leicester LE1 1RE Cost: £64, £52 conc.* Booking code: WSL1505

The best way to learn the craft of the novelist is to write a novel. Through the sharing of work-in-progress and detailed feedback, participants hone their writing and critiquing skills. This class is driven by the participants’ needs, so we will spend time focusing on specific writing issues such as dialogue or plotting when requested. All levels of experience are welcome.

More Magic of Fairy Tales with Polly Tuckett 4 Week Course Day & Time: Mondays 11am – 1pm Date: 23 February – 16 March Where: LCB Depot, 31 Rutland Street, Leicester LE1 1RE Cost: £64, £52 conc.* Booking code: WSL1504 Following on from The Magic of Fairy Tales, this short course will deepen our understanding of this timeless genre through examples of familiar and less well known fairy tales. We will write our own versions of classic tales as well as original works of fantastic fiction.

This course will encourage you to experiment with a wide range of writing styles and genres – fiction, poetry, drama, memoir and more. Using play, exercises and feedback we will discover new possibilities and explore unexpected areas in our writing. All levels of experience are welcome.

Writing Poetry for Performance with Lydia Towsey 4 Week Course Day & Time: Thursdays 6.30pm – 8.30pm Date: 26 February – 19 March Where: The Y, 7 East Street, City Centre, Leicester LE1 6EY Cost: £64, £52 conc.* Booking code: WSL1506 Join poet and performer Lydia Towsey for this short course focused on writing poetry for performance.

Combining creative writing with performance skills, participants will develop new work across a range of genres and styles and discover their own unique voice.

We will briefly explore the history of performance poetry and debate the differences and similarities between writing for the page and stage.

PLEASE NOTE: places are limited on these courses, therefore early booking is advisable.

Writing School Anthology We’ve partnered up with Pewter Rose Press to produce the second Writing School Anthology. All writers enrolled on one of our courses between August 2013 and December 2015 will have the chance to submit a piece of writing to be considered for the anthology. Each submission will go through a selection and editorial process, giving Writing School participants valuable insight into the practice of submitting your work to a publisher. Chosen pieces will be published in the anthology. See www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk for more details.

Courses Performing Poetry Workshop with Lydia Towsey

Beginnings, Middles & Endings with Alison Moore

Date & Time: Thursday 26th March, 6.30pm – 8.30pm Where: The Y, 7 East Street, City Centre, Leicester LE1 6EY Cost: £18, £14 conc.* Booking code: WSL1507

3 Week Course Day & Time: Tuesday 1pm – 3pm Date: 28 April – 12 May Where: Embrace Arts, Lancaster Rd, Leicester LE1 7HA Cost: £60, £50 conc.* Booking code: WSL1509

Join experienced live literature performer Lydia Towsey for a practical workshop on performing your poetry. We will look at lifting work from the page, exploring microphone and vocal skills, introductions, intonation, body language and confidence. We welcome all levels of ability and no previous experience is needed.

Special Offer: If you have attended Writing Poetry for Performance you can book Performing Poetry Workshop at the discounted price of £14 (proof of booking is required).

Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Alison Moore (author of Man Booker shortlisted The Lighthouse) will be leading this three-part exploration of narrative.

Session one – Beginnings – will consider ways in which stories are conceived as well as examining the art of the first line. Session two – Middles – will look at narrative shape and pace. Finally, Endings will address the point at which we might leave a story as well as exploring the power of last lines.

Special Event Line Breaks in Free Verse Workshop with Mimi Khalvati One-day Special Event Workshop Date & time: Sunday, 15th March 2015, 11am – 5pm Where: Phoenix Arts Centre, 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TG Cost: £45, £35 conc.* Booking code: WSL1510 The line break is the sine qua non of free verse. Not only does it establish a poem as poem but, being the most precise of instruments, defines its very nature. In this workshop, we will explore how we can refine that instrument, empower and employ it, both as writers and readers. Through exercises, we will discover new styles of lineation and how to relineate previously written poems to give them new life and meaning.

Prepare to get excited about linebreaks!

Magazine Literary magazine Brittle Star has almost 15 years experience publishing new and emerging short story writers and poets, many for the first time. Writing School East Midlands is delighted to be able to offer our participants the chance to submit work for consideration.

Submissions will be read by two professional editors and final selections will be published in a future issue of Brittle Star. www.brittlestar.org.uk. If you’ve attended courses in Leicester or Nottingham you can submit work for consideration. For further information please visit our website www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk or email info@writingeastmidlands.co.uk

PLEASE NOTE: places are limited on these courses, therefore early booking is advisable.

Tutors POLLY TUCKETT is a published writer and tutor of creative writing with over fifteen years teaching experience. She teaches in a range of settings and pitches her courses to people of all abilities and varying levels of writing experience. Polly has good knowledge of the local literary scene having curated Short Fuse, a short fiction spoken word showcase for several years in Brighton and Leicester.

ROD DUNCAN is a novelist and screenwriter. His first novel Backlash was shortlisted for the John Creasey Dagger for the best debut crime novel. His publishers include Simon & Schuster, Five Leaves, George Ronald and Angry Robot. His science fiction novel, The Bullet Catcher’s Daughter (Angry Robot, 2014), has been shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award.

MAXINE LINNELL has written three novels for young adults: Vintage, Closer, (Five Leaves and A&C Black) and Breaking the Rules (Bloomsbury). Real Reads have also published her three retellings of novels by Thomas Hardy for children and young people. She mentors new writers and runs story cafes in Leicester Libraries.

LYDIA TOWSEY has a Masters in Creative Writing. Shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize (2012), she’s spoken at the House of Lords and performed at London’s 100 Club.

Her collection, The Venus Papers will be published by Burning Eye Books in 2015.

ALISON MOORE’s short fiction has been published in Best British Short Stories anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The title story of her debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, won a New Writer novella prize. Her first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the National Book Awards 2012 (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize 2013. Her second novel, He Wants, was published in August.

MIMI KHALVATI has published seven collections with Carcanet Press, including The Meanest Flower which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection is The Weather Wheel, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is the founder of The Poetry School in London, where she is a tutor. She has received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Gift Certificates available now Help your friends make time for writing. Whether you’re looking for the perfect birthday gift for the writer in your life or if you just want to treat a friend to some writing time, our gift certificates are just the ticket. They come in denominations of £10, £15, £20 or £50 with a gift-card. Visit our website www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk or call us on 0115 959 7929 to find out more.

£45 Cost

Writing Workshop 2 with Maxine Linnell Writing Poetry for Performance with Lydia Towsey Performing Poetry Workshop with Lydia Towsey Beginnings, Middles & Endings with Alison Moore Line Breaks in Free Verse Workshop with Mimi Khalvati NOTTINGHAM

WSL1505 WSL1506 WSL1507 WSL1509 WSL1510

Elements of Fiction with Alison Moore Metre & Rhythm with Wayne Burrows

Close Reading the Elegy Masterclass with David Constantine £24 Advanced Poetry Workshop with Mimi Khalvati

WSN1505 WSN1506 WSN1501 WSN1507

TOTAL AMOUNT

Leap into Poetry with Jacqueline Gabbitas

WSN1504

£35 conc.*

£18 conc.

£52 conc.*

£65 conc.

£52 conc.

£65 conc.

£65 conc.*

£35 conc.*

£50 conc.*

£14 conc.*

£52 conc.*

£52 conc.*

£52 conc.*

      

Tick

£ ..................................

£45

£64

£80

£64

£80

Writing Successful Crime Fiction with Stephen Booth

WSN1503

£80

Finding your Voice with Kerry Young

WSN1502

£60

£18

£64

£64

£64

More Magic of Fairy Tales with Polly Tuckett

WSL1504

In the event of cancellation by us, you will be offered a full refund or the opportunity to transfer to another course.

Refunds are not normally made in other circumstances.

In exceptional circumstances consideration will be given to a written request from a student who wishes to cancel. If a refund is agreed, a £10 administration fee will be charged. It is also possible for the fee you have paid to be credited against a future course. Full Terms and Conditions can be found on our website.

      

Tick

£128 £104 conc.*

Novel Writing Workshop with Rod Duncan

WSL1502

Cost

Course Cancellation

LEICESTER

By Post: to book on any of the courses in this programme, please complete the booking form and return to Writing School East Midlands, 49 Stoney Street, Nottingham NG1 1LX with your cheque (made payable to Writing School East Midlands Ltd). If booking for someone else, please include their name and contact details in the Additional Information section.

Online: book online at www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk and pay by debit or credit card. There is a 4% PayPal fee if booking online.

HOW TO BOOK

Booking Form

Email: info@writingeastmidlands.co.uk

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Telephone: 0115 959 7929

Website: www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk

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Nottingham

Creative Writing Courses

February – March 2015 Masterclass with David Constantine and courses with

Kerry Young

Stephen Booth Alison Moore

Poetry Workshop with Mimi Khalvati and courses with

Wayne Burrows Jacqueline Gabbitas

Book online at www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk Writing School East Midlands – The Writing School in Leicester and Nottingham builds on 60 years of experience to provide courses, workshops and events to help writers of all abilities to develop their own work.

Make time for writing Welcome to Writing School East Midlands: Nottingham Founded over sixty years ago Writing School Leicester, now with the support of Writing East Midlands, has blossomed in the last few years into Writing School East Midlands with bases in Leicester and Nottingham. Our new programme of courses, workshops and special events reflects the Writing School’s commitment to providing excellent tuition in a supportive and creative environment, and we welcome writers of all abilities regardless of experience and academic qualifications.

Our tutors are not only celebrated writers and performers in their own right, but accomplished teachers acknowledged for their skills and ability to work with a broad spectrum of readers and writers across a range of genres and forms, including novel writing, short fiction, memoir and poetry. Our Nottingham tutors are: Stephen Booth, Wayne Burrows, Jacqueline Gabbitas, Alison Moore and Kerry Young.

Our Special Events programme offers wonderful opportunities to work with distinguished visiting writers from across the country. This season’s programme includes Mimi Khalvati and David Constantine.

We’re delighted to be working once again with our venue partner Waterstones Nottingham and thank them for the use of the Sillitoe Room. We look forward to building on a new publishing partnership with Brittle Star magazine, and thank Pewter Rose Press for its continued support of The Writing School Anthology.

Writing East Midlands administrates Writing School East Midlands and is a not-for-profit organisation supported by Arts Council England.

Courses Finding your Voice with Kerry Young

Leap into Poetry with Jacqueline Gabbitas

5 Week Course Day & Time: Mondays, 6pm – 8pm Date: 23 February – 23 March Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £80, £65 conc.* Booking code: WSN1502

4 Week Course Day & Time: Thursdays, 1pm – 3pm Date: 26 February – 19 March Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £64, £56 conc.

Booking code: WSN1504

This short course will help you to develop narrative voices that fit your character(s) and story. You will learn how to use voice to drive plot and build dramatic tension, and how to craft dialogue that is authentic and purposeful.

You will participate in writing exercises and share your work within the group. Suitable for writers at all levels.

Taking the building blocks of poetry writing as its focus, this short course will explore imagery, structure, sound and language to produce poetry drafts we can develop at home. Suitable for writers new to poetry as well as poets looking for inspiration through exercises, examples and group feedback.

Writing Successful Crime Fiction with Stephen Booth

Elements of Fiction with Alison Moore

5 Week Course Day & Time: Thursdays, 6pm – 8pm Date: 26 February – 26 March Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £80, £65 conc.

Booking code: WSN1503

5 Week Course Day & Time: Fridays 1pm – 3pm Date: 27 February – 27 March Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £80, £65 conc.

Booking code: WSN1505

This course will explore the routes to writing successful crime fiction and examine its most vital elements – creating characters, building a plot, making use of location – as well as how to improve the chances of publication. Sessions will include interactive teaching, group discussion, exercises, and feedback. Suitable for all levels of experience.

Alison Moore (author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted The Lighthouse) will be leading this examination of various aspects of prose fiction. Over five sessions, participants will explore story structure, setting, the narrator, conflict and backstory, looking at examples from contemporary novels and short stories as well as producing their own work. Suitable for all levels.

Metre & Rhythm with Wayne Burrows 4 Week Course Day & Time: Fridays 6pm – 8pm Date: 6 – 27 March Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £64, £52 conc.* Booking code: WSN1506 Learning how to use poetic metre is about developing our ability to hear the natural rhythms of speech and language themselves. In this course, we will learn to recognise and use the key features of traditional metrical units, from the everyday bread and butter of iambics to the slightly more exotic likes of anapests, spondees and dactyls and focus on learning to hear metre in the language that surrounds us everyday.

PLEASE NOTE: places are limited on these courses, therefore early booking is advisable.

Special Events Close Reading the Elegy Masterclass with David Constantine Date & time: Saturday, 7th February 2015, 1pm – 4pm Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £24, £18 conc.

Booking code: WSN1501 The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of loss: lament, then praise and admiration of the idealized dead, and finally consolation and solace. Poets such as Auden, Celan, Rilke, Heaney, Dunn, Lowell and Hughes wrote memorable examples. In this masterclass, award-winning poet David Constantine will share with the group examples of elegies for close reading and discussion, and give insights in to how this demanding and inspiring form works.

Participants on this workshop are also invited to attend David’s reading at Waterstones Nottingham 5pm for free (please bring proof of course-booking).

Advanced Poetry Workshop with Mimi Khalvati Date & time: Saturday, 14th March 2015, 11am – 5pm Where: Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR Cost: £45, £35 conc.* Booking code: WSN1507 This workshop will appeal to those who are more experienced in writing poetry and would enjoy taking on fresh challenges. The morning session will consist of writing exercises while drawing inspiration from the work of other writers and trying out new approaches.

The afternoon will be a feedback session and the group are invited to bring in a poem of their own with 15 photocopies. There will be positive feedback from the group and suggestions for further developing your work.

Participants on this workshop are also invited to attend Mimi’s reading at Waterstones Nottingham for free (please bring proof of course-booking).

PLEASE NOTE: places are limited on these courses, therefore early booking is advisable.

Book online or by post. See booking form for details. www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk

Special Event Readings at Waterstones Nottingham David Constantine Will read from his latest collections including Elder (Bloodaxe, 2014). Saturday 7th February, 5pm

Mimi Khalvati Will read from her new collection The Weather Wheel (Carcanet, 2014). Saturday 14th March, 7pm Tickets: £5 each – available at Waterstones Nottingham, 1–5 Bridlesmith Gate, Notts, NG1 2GR

Publishing opportunities:

We’ve teamed up with Pewter Rose Press and Brittle Star magazine to offer participants who have attended our courses the opportunity to submit work for consideration. For more information, please see the adverts in the Leicester pages, or visit our website on www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk

Tutors STEPHEN BOOTH is a former newspaper journalist and the author of 14 novels in the Cooper and Fry series, featuring two young Derbyshire police detectives. His books are translated into 15 languages and have won accolades on both sides of the Atlantic, including two US awards for Best British Crime Novel of the Year. His most recent book is The Corpse Bridge.

WAYNE BURROWS has published three collections of poetry and several sequences, including Marginalia (2001), The Protein Songs (2005) and The Apple Sequence (2011).

A Cycle of Songs from the Body’s Interior: New & Selected Poems is set to appear in Summer 2015. His most recent publications are the fiction commissions, Spirit Wrappings: Some Notes on the Rashleigh Jackson Family Collection (2012), Marine: A Story in Eight Objects (2013) and Exotica Suite (forthcoming in June 2015). He is based at Primary in Nottingham.

DAVID CONSTANTINE is a poet and freelance writer and translator, a Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, and was co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2004 to 2013. He has published ten books of poetry, five translations and a novel with Bloodaxe. His poetry titles include Something for the Ghosts (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Collected Poems (2004), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Nine Fathom Deep (2009); and Elder (2014).

JACQUELINE GABBITAS’ short collections are Mid Lands (Hearing Eye), Earthworks and Small Grass (Stonewood Press) and her poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Review and The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber). She has read her work at The Times Oxford Literary Festival, Poetry on the Lake (Italy) and for BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. She is co-editor of Brittle Star magazine.

MIMI KHALVATI has published seven collections with Carcanet Press, including The Meanest Flower which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection is The Weather Wheel, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is the founder of The Poetry School in London, where she is a tutor. She has received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

ALISON MOORE’s short fiction has been published in Best British Short Stories anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The title story of her debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, won a New Writer novella prize. Her first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the National Book Awards 2012 (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize 2013. Her second novel, He Wants, was published in August.

KERRY YOUNG is the author of Pao (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Gloria (Bloomsbury, 2013). Pao was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize and the East Midlands Book Award. Gloria was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award, longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She is currently working on her third novel. Kerry is a Reader for The Literary Consultancy, a tutor for the Arvon Foundation and Honorary Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Nottingham.

“Teaching was great – inspirational, practical, trustworthy.”