Easter masterclass
During the Easter 2025 holidays, we’re hosting five one-day creative writing masterclasses to support your writing practice. From creating memorable characters, managing pace, boosting your creativity and the importance of place to imagery, symbolism and metaphor in prose, our five Easter masterclasses will offer a deep-dive into a particular topic. Three masterclasses will be held at the Jubilee Library in Brighton while a further two will be online.
The full details are:
10-4pm 4th April (Jubilee Library, Brighton) Managing pace Pace is a fundamental element of writing. When you read something well-paced, you just somehow know, because you’re pulled into the story and time passes quickly. On the other hand, you can feel the drag of it when something isn’t well-paced. But pace is rather elusive. What actually is it, and how can you improve it in your own story? Pace operates at every level of a piece of writing, from individual sentences to the whole book. As writers we need to be aware of when something we’ve written needs slowing down and lingering over, and when it needs speeding up. We often use pace instinctively, which is great when it works; when it doesn’t, we need to figure out why, and what to do about it. This practical workshop will break pace down and explore techniques for using it more effectively in our writing: from sentence to paragraph to scene, and beyond.
The workshop tutor is Beth Miller. Beth is the author of six novels, including the bestselling The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright (2020). Her most recent novel, The Woman Who Came Back to Life (2022), will be published in seven languages. She has also published two non-fiction books about Shakespeare and the Archers. She is a tutor on the Creative Writing MA and MFA at West Dean College, and a regular tutor for Arvon. She works as a writing mentor and book coach for writers at all stages. She has a PhD in Psychology.
10-4pm 5th April (Jubilee Library, Brighton) Boosting your creativity We often freeze at the vast space or the volume of the blank notebook or computer screen and doubt ourselves. In this workshop, we will look at ways to boost our creativity. We’ll start by listening to how other writers and poets encounter the white page and look at ways to get the pen to release your stories, and get the keyboard tapping away. Then we’ll discuss the Power Hour – getting the writing muscle working so that it becomes a habit, before moving on to explore how and what to write.
The workshop will be led by Roy McFarlane. Roy is a Poet, Writer and former Youth & Community Worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage, spending most of his years living in Wolverhampton and the Black Country and now living in Brighton. He is currently the National Canal Laureate. He’s the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and Starbucks Poet in Residence and co-editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack). His three collections are published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath and The Healing Next Time (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize) and his third collection Living by Troubled Waters is out now. Roy has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a Doctor of Letters by the University of Wolverhampton. He continues to perform nationally and internationally sharing his passion for social justice, equality, identity love and the healing power of poetry as a witness to our times.
FULLY BOOKED 11-5pm 6th April (Jubilee Library, Brighton) Creating Memorable Characters When we think of great works of fiction – and our favourite books – it tends to be the characters that linger long after the intricacies of plot have faded: Nazneen Ahmed, Scrooge, Elizabeth Bennet, Eleanor Oliphant, Marx Watanabe, Baby Kochamma and so on. What is it that makes these characters so unforgettable? They’re not all good, or likeable. How do we build characters readers care about? In this workshop we will be looking at some of the different ways to find our characters, how to make them credible and complex, and the tools we have to show them to our readers.
The workshop will be led by Laura Wilkinson. Laura has published seven novels for adults (two under a pseudonym) and numerous short stories. These novels are That Night in New York, which came out in September 2024 published by Serendipity, the new romance imprint at Legend Times, Crossing the Line, The Family Line, Redemption Song and Skin Deep. Crossing the Line was a Welsh Books Council book of the month and Skin Deep was longlisted for Not the Booker prize. Alongside writing, she runs workshops on craft and has spoken at literary events nationwide. For more than twelve years, she’s worked as a creative writing tutor for organisations including New Writing South and on the MA programme at West Dean. She is also a structural editor and mentor, coaching writers to competition short listings and publication.
10-4pm 12th April (online) Placemaking – creating great settings This workshop aims to develop the way you look at the nature of landscape and setting and help you understand how they can contribute to your writing as elements of narrative. We shall start by looking at how artists, filmmakers, photographers and landscape architects create settings that are charged, layered, dynamic and enigmatic. We’ll follow this with practical work on how real places can suggest ideas for a story. Then, with reference to selected texts and through writing exercises we’ll explore how settings and landscape influence both character and action. Finally, I’d like you to bring in a photograph of a place that resonates deeply with you, either positively or negatively and we shall use them as a tool for writing in response to the emotional content of a space.
Rosie is a novelist, freelance editor, writing coach/mentor, landscape architect and English language teacher. After qualifying as a landscape architect from the University of Greenwich she lived and worked in Denmark and Canada for several years, designing gardens, parks and urban spaces. Her first novel Seal Intestine Raincoat, published in 2009 by NeWest Press, won the 2010 Alberta Trade Fiction Book Award and received an honourable mention for the Sunburst Fiction Award the same year. She was also shortlisted for the 2010 John Hirsch award for the Most Promising Manitoba writer. Her second novel The Insistent Garden, also published by NeWest Press, was the recipient of the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction in Manitoba in 2014. The Eavesdroppers, her third novel, was published by NeWest Press in September 2018. She is currently writing her fifth novel.
10-4pm 13th April (online) Imagery, Symbolism and Metaphor in Prose How do you know when to put a waterfall in your short story or novel? This masterclass aims to improve your use of symbolism in fiction as well as exploring when to use and restrict imagery. We’ll contrast stylistically rich writing with that which is relatively economical but still uses symbolism. In addition, we’ll explore linking metaphors to themes and using photographs as tools for writing. No preparatory reading is necessary.
The workshop will be led by John McCullough. John’s collection of poems Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His most recent collection Panic Response was published in 2022 and was a Book of the Year in The Telegraph as well as featuring in The Times‘ list of Notable New Poetry Books for the year. Its long poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He has been teaching creative writing and literature in higher education since 2002 and lives in Hove.
To book your space, email Cathy Hayward at cathy@creativewritingprogramme.org.uk. Places are secured on a first-come, first-served basis. There will be a maximum of 15 students in any masterclass.