Elizabeth Garner is the author of two novels, Nightdancing (Headline, 2004) and The Ingenious Edgar Jones (Headline, 2008), both of which were influenced by traditional folk tale narratives and motifs. In 2022 she published Lost & Found (Unbound, 2022), her own retelling of a selection of traditional stories. She is a freelance fiction editor, teaches creative writing at the University of Oxford and is the events organiser at Caper Bookshop in Oxford. She is also the arts trustee at The Blackden Trust, an educational charity established at her family home in Cheshire.
Folk Fiction: Telling the Tale
Mon 29 June 2026 - Fri 3 July 2026
Tutors
/ Elizabeth Garner & Zoe Gilbert
Guest Reader
/ Andrew Michael Hurley
Course Fee
/
From
£ per person
Genre
/ Fiction
Language
/ English
Folk tales are some of our oldest and most influential narrative forms. They have provided the backbone of fantasy writing and speculative fiction, from children’s books and YA to genre and literary fiction for adults. In recent years the resurgence of dystopian folk tales, ecological folklore and folk horror proves that this specific craft of storytelling is as relevant now as it ever was. Whatever your interest is in this genre, this course will provide you with insights and skills to work with folklore within your own stories and explore the deep meaning that can emerge from folk fiction.
We’ll investigate the many ways in which we can take folklore seriously, as part of real and imagined lives, and use it as the starting point for creating our own fictional worlds. Through participatory workshops, including writing exercises, reading and discussion, you will develop new pieces of writing that grow from the seeds of folklore. We’ll look for folklore in our own daily lives and memories as original sources for story ideas, and practice building fictional worlds from snippets of found folklore, such as customs, rituals and local beliefs. We’ll unpack the role of objects in folk stories and experiment with building our own story worlds around them. We’ll look at the ways folk fiction writers borrow the magic and resonance of lore and tales to enhance meaning and create disruption in contemporary tales.
This course is for writers who want to engage more deeply with folklore in their writing and using it as a means of inspiring original new work. No previous experience is necessary.
Tutors
Elizabeth Garner
Zoe Gilbert
Zoe Gilbert is the author of two novels, Folk (Bloomsbury, 2018), which was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC Radio, and Mischief Acts (Bloomsbury, 2022) which was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK and internationally, on BBC Radio, and won prizes including the Costa Short Story Award. She is the co-editor with Lily Dunn of the recovery anthology, A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound, 2021), and is co-director of London Lit Lab, where she teaches creative writing courses on folklore, folk tales, the fantastic and enchantment, and mentors writers.
Guest Reader
Andrew Michael Hurley
Andrew Michael Hurley’s first novel, The Loney was originally published in 2014 by Tartarus Press and then by John Murray a year later, after which it won the 2015 Costa First Novel Award and the 2016 British Book Industry awards for Debut Novel and Book of the Year. Devil’s Day (John Murray, 2017) went on to jointly win the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award for best second novel. His BBC Radio 4 series, Voices in the Valley, which aired in autumn 2022 won bronze at the 2023 Aria Awards for audio and radio broadcasts. His third novel, Starve Acre (John Murray, 2024) has been recently adapted into a feature film, starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. The critically acclaimed Barrowbeck (John Murray) was published in 2024 and his latest novel, Saltwash (John Murray), is out in October 2025. The author lives in Lancashire and teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School.