Tom Bullough is the author of four novels and, most recently, Sarn Helen: a Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future (Granta Books, 2023), which won the 2024 Wales Book of the Year and the 2023 Waterstones Welsh Book of the Year. His first feature film, Mr Burton, about the early life of the actor Richard Burton, will be released theatrically in spring 2025. At present, Tom is the Story Associate at Hay Castle, working on an audio-visual project, Tarddle/ Source, about the River Wye, its ecology and the people of its banks. He grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire and now lives in Bannau Brycheiniog with two children, a collie and a goldfish.
Climate Writing: Inspiring care, empowering change
Mon 12 May 2025 - Fri 16 May 2025
Tutors
/ Tom Bullough & Nicola Davies
Guest Reader
/ Laline Paull (Digital)
Course Fee
/
From
£650 - £750 per person
Genres
/ FictionNatureNon-Fiction
Language
/ English
What do you feel about living in an emergency? Grief? Courage? Love? There has never been a more important age in which to be a writer, to be a truthful witness to these times of crisis and dismay, of reckless bravery and ancient love for nature in all its forms.
This course will explore how the living world can be translated to the page in a way which is vivid, and full of story. How do we relate to the natural world? With wit, grace, play or fury? How can writing empower readers to enact change?
Ultimately, this course will teach you how to intertwine commentary on climate emergency within your work and question to what degree is it the author’s responsibility to do so within their writing.
Led by two award-winning climate activists Tom Bullough and Nicola Davies, this course will consider the core skills of both creative non-fiction and fiction, looking at narrative structure, editing and the importance of character within the theme of climate and ecological emergencies. You’ll leave the week with a deeper understanding of how to create writing that matters and how our stories might be true to both nature and our human nature.
Bursaries
One £250 bursary space is available for this course. To apply, please complete this application form Deadline for applications: Wednesday 12 March 2025
For further information about the support available, please visit our Financial Assistance page: https://tynewydd.wales/courses-retreats/financial-support/
Tutors
Tom Bullough
Nicola Davies
Nicola Davies is the author of over 80 non-fiction, fiction and poetry books for children and young people, many of which focus on the natural world and our relationship with it. Also a zoologist with a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge, Nicola has studied geese, whales and bats in the wild and was one of the original presenters of the BBC children’s wildlife programme The Really Wild Show. Nicola was lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa university for ten years. Her work has been published in more than 12 languages and won awards around the world, including the SLA's first lifetime achievement award for her contribution to children's non-fiction. Her poetry collection Choose Love was short listed for the Yoto Carniege medal for writing in 2024, and her fantasy novel Skrimsli (Firefly Press) set in a world where animals and humans can sometimes share their thoughts won the Children & Young People Award at Wales Book of the Year in 2024.
Guest Reader
Laline Paull (Digital)
Laline Paull's debut novel The Bees (Fourth Estate, 2015) was nominated for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and her latest novel, Pod (Corsair, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novel The Ice (Fourth Estate, 2018) is set in the geopolitical Arctic, and though her three novels are often referred to as 'cli-fi’, this is not a term she uses for herself. She is a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, of the Royal Society of Literature, sits on the Blue Plaque Selection Committee for Historic England, and is a full voting member of BAFTA. Her writing has been translated into 29 languages.