Lisa Blower is an award-winning writer and academic hailed by Kit De Waal as the “natural heir to Arnold Bennett”. She is a champion of working-class literature and regional voices, often paying homage to The Potteries where she grew up. She's the author of two novels, Sitting Ducks (Fair Acre Press, 2016) - shortlisted for The Rubery Award, the Arnold Bennett Prize and The Guardian's Not the Booker - and Pondweed (Myriad Editions, 2020). Her collection of short stories It's Gone Dark over Bill's Mother's (Myriad Editions, 2019) won the Arnold Bennett Prize. She contributed to Common People (ed. Kit De Waal, Unbound, 2019), and was a columnist for The New Issue during 2020. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative & Professional Writing at Keele University where she continues to champion regional voices. lisablower.co.uk
How to Teach Creative Writing
Are you a writer looking to lead creative writing workshops for the first time? Are you a teacher looking to introduce creative writing to the classroom? Are you an existing practitioner looking to enhance your tutoring skills?
This weekend residential course aims to enable you to develop your skills as a teacher of creative writing and equip yourself with techniques and approaches to engage a variety of audiences. The course will also be an opportunity for you to understand how to mine your own practice as you consider the practicalities of tutoring and inspiring a group in a safe and creative environment.
Join award-winning authors and creative writing lecturers, Lisa Blower and Alys Conran as they unpick the writing and teaching process from start to finish and share methods you can apply to your own workshops and practice. Through group sessions and discussions, and a series of creative writing prompts, you will gain the confidence and skills required to help design and deliver creative writing workshops with an impact.
Tutors
Lisa Blower
Alys Conran
Alys Conran is the author of novels Pigeon (Parthian Books, 2016), and Dignity (W&N, 2019). Pigeon was the first novel to be published simultaneously in English and Welsh and won the Wales Book of the Year Award, for which Dignity was also shortlisted. It also won the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize and People's Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her short fiction has been placed in the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize and Bath Short Story Award and is published widely in magazines and anthologies and on the radio, including Radio 4. She also publishes poetry, creative non-fiction, creative essays and literary translations. She was Hay Festival International Fellow 2019-20, travelling to Hay Festivals worldwide. She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor, a regular tutor at Tŷ Newydd and other venues, and previously managed many projects to promote creative writing and reading in health and social care. www.alysconran.com.