Cynan Jones is an acclaimed fiction writer from the west coast of Wales. His work has appeared in over twenty countries, and in journals and magazines including Granta, Freeman's and The New Yorker. He has also written a screenplay for the hit crime drama Hinterland, a collection of tales for children, and a number of stories for BBC Radio. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous awards, and won, among other prizes, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, and the BBC National Short Story Award. www.cynanjones.net
Brave Fiction
Mon 7 September 2026 - Fri 11 September 2026
Tutors
/ Cynan Jones & James Scudamore
Guest Reader
/ Eimear McBride (Digital)
Course Fee
/
From
£ per person
Genre
/ Fiction
Language
/ English
With so much writing advice flying around, how do you shut out the noise and stay true to your story? How do you find courage equal to the aspiration of writing something original? How on earth do you know what your voice is? And how do you know when to deploy reason, and when to trust in your instinct?
Led by acclaimed fiction writers James Scudamore and Cynan Jones, this course will help you to be brave and listen to the work itself. It will give you the confidence to commit to experimentation and risk-taking, and the perspective to assess whether your words have the integrity to carry the choices you make. If you suspect that the story you’re writing needs to break the mould, and you’re prepared to embrace the work that will entail, join us for a week that will steel your nerves!
Tutors
Cynan Jones
James Scudamore
James Scudamore is the author of the novels English Monsters (Jonathan Cape, 2020), Wreaking (Harvill Secker, 2013), Heliopolis (Vintage, 2009) and The Amnesia Clinic (Vintage, 2007). He has received the Somerset Maugham Award and been nominated for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Booker Prize.
Guest Reader
Eimear McBride (Digital)
Eimear McBride is the author of four novels: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (Galley Beggar Press, 2013), The Lesser Bohemians (Faber and Faber, 2016), Strange Hotel (Faber and Faber, 2020) and The City Changes Its Face (Faber and Faber, 2025). She held the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading and is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Kerry Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2018 she was named in the top ten writers, working in English, by The Times Literary Supplement. She is from the west of Ireland and lives in London.