Conference Workshop Sessions 2025

Writing is Rewriting: Editing fiction

This workshop will help you get the best out of your writing. Editing your writing is as creative and crucial a process as writing your first draft. Throughout this workshop, we'll explore how to edit your fiction to get the best out of your story, so your characters feel alive and your story holds your reader's attention. We'll look at the broader scope of your story as well as style and narrative voice, playing with structure, nurturing and interrogating characters.

You'll spend time as reader, writer and editor to determine the questions you should be asking of your own writing, so that each chapter, paragraph and sentence of your fiction comes to life on the page.

The workshop will be interactive, with individual and group activities, plus plenty of opportunity to discuss techniques and queries regarding your writing.

Short Fiction

Célia
Performative Poetry

Character, Conflict & Theme: The Screenwriter's Trinity A Practical Workshop for Story Builders

Character, Conflict & Theme: The Screenwriter’s Trinity is a workshop by Douglas R. Beer that offers writers in film—and other narrative forms—a clear, practical framework for building strong dramatic structure. Through short exercises and discussion, participants will sketch a protagonist, map out layered conflicts, and explore how theme can emerge through action. The session is designed to sharpen creative instincts and highlight how character, conflict, and theme interact to drive compelling screen – and other – narratives.

Douglas Beer
Scriptwriting

Writing Through the Senses

Break free from traditional forms and awaken your writing through the senses.

In this hands-on workshop for poets and prose writers, we’ll move beyond simple description to explore the full spectrum of sensory experience. Through playful, experimental exercises, you’ll engage sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell in unexpected ways—sometimes blending them, sometimes stripping them away—to generate vivid, surprising work.

We’ll experiment with synaesthesia, sensory “mash-ups,” and even sensory deprivation to push past the familiar and open new creative possibilities.

Elizabeth M. Castillo
Sensorial Poetry

Jason Donald
POV

Says Who? - The Deep Power of Point of View.

Every narrative has a point of view, but have you chosen yours carefully? In this workshop we’ll explore novels with fascinating points of view and discuss why AI cannot replicate this most human of literary crafts. Participants will be shown the decision-making process and the specific techniques Jason employed in constructing the point of view of his protagonist in Dalila. Through discussions and writing exercises, participants will gain insight into choosing the best point of view for their stories.

The Art of Conversation - Doing Dialogue

In this session, we will focus on the role that dialogue plays in building protagonists. Thinking about what makes your characters’ voices distinctive and establishing ways of describing telling aspects of your characters’ physicality while they talk will be at the heart of our work. Through our own lively discussions, there'll also be exploration of how to make characters' speech convincing and move plot along. Thinking about the rhythm of conversation in fiction will be a feature too. You'll leave the workshop with plenty of practical tips to help with the difficult but exciting challenge of making speech sing clearly on the page.

Michael Donkor
Characters

K. M. Elkes
Flash Fiction

Building Connections - A Story Ideas Grid.

In this workshop we will look at an alternative method of creating ideas for stories that can be used for flash fiction, short stories and even longer forms. We will explore the Four C’s of story ideas and you will put together a Grid of Possibilities, mining your own experience, knowledge, barriers and desires to create connections and pathways to inspire your writing. The grid emphasises character, setting, action and complication, and can be used many times in the future to produce story ideas. The session will feature writing tasks and some group analysis of a short text.

Marisa Linton
YA/Adult Fantasy Fiction

Writing Fantasy for Young Adults and Adults

This workshop will be led by Professor Marisa Linton, whose own writing ranges from scholarly history, through historical fantasy, to YA fantasy in a contemporary setting. The format will be interactive, with space for participants to discuss, share, and try out their own ideas. Subjects we shall cover, include: why we write fantasy; world-building, the rules of magic, and making fantasy ‘real’; shaping characters that obsess readers; goals for your characters, raising the stakes and upping the tension; publishing categories and which ‘bookshop table’ we hope to land on – young adult, new adult, adult, and romantasy.

Eleanor "Ellie" Pilcher
Marketing

Nikesh Shukla
Non-Fiction

Janet Skeslien Charles
Historical Fiction/Novel

Susan Tiberghien
Non-Fiction

Ways into Climate Writing! How can we write about such a huge topic without becoming overwhelmed?

The twin crises of climate change and ecological devastation often feel completely overwhelming, but arguably it’s more important than ever to write imaginatively about these issues. Readers are keen to read compelling novels, short stories, poetry, memoir, and journalism exploring life on our changing planet, together with the many creative paths and possible solutions through these difficult times. From politics to lyricism, science to story, our audience is waiting.

Please join prize-winning eco-novelist Deborah Tomkins in this exciting workshop. Deborah will bring various techniques and published work to your attention, with suggestions for further reading, and invite you to begin a piece of your own. There will be opportunities to share. This workshop is for writers working in any discipline or genre.

Deborah Tomkins
Climate Writing

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