Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer for children and young people with a background in social justice and equality. She writes across genres and age groups. Her debut book for young adults, Orangeboy (Hachette, 2016), was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Award and won the Bookseller YA Prize and Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction. She has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal seven times - and shortlisted once. Her awards include the Little Rebels Book Award, the inaugural Jhalak Prize for Children and Young People, the Woman and Home Teen Drama Award, and the CrimeFest YA Prize twice. In 2023, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Patrice works extensively in schools inspiring young people to become storytellers and mentors adult writers from backgrounds under-represented in traditional British publishing.
Writing Fiction for Children and Young Adults
Do you want to write for children and young people? Is your notebook or laptop brimming with plots and characters you’re unsure where to take next? This course will give you the building blocks to help you shape your ideas into cohesive stories that will inspire, challenge, and entertain your young audiences. Supported by two experienced tutors and award-winning authors, Patrice Lawrence and Lee Newbery, you’ll participate in group workshops on character development, dialogue, setting, plotting, and writing characters with different backgrounds to you. The tutors will also dedicate time to demystifying the publishing industry and the world of agenting, and will share tips on how to build a sustainable career as a children and young people’s author. Individual sessions with each tutor will be on offer during the week, during which you’ll receive bespoke feedback and advice on honing your craft and the direction of your work. You will leave with new confidence and motivation, alongside a deeper understanding of how to write meaningful, captivating, and relevant fiction for children and young adults.
Tutors
Patrice Lawrence
Lee Newbery
Lee Newbery lives with his husband, son and dog in a seaside town in south Wales. His first book, The Last Firefox (Penguin, 2022) was Waterstones Children's Book of the Month and shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2023. It was also awarded the 2023 Wales Book of the Year, Wales Arts Review’s People’s Choice Award. Lee enjoys adventuring, drinking ridiculous amounts of tea, and giving his dog a good cuddle - or a cwtch, as they say in Wales.
Guest Reader
Caryl Lewis (Digital)
Caryl Lewis is a multi-award-winning Welsh novelist, children’s writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her breakthrough novel Martha, Jac a Sianco (2004) is widely regarded as a modern classic of Welsh literature and sits on the Welsh curriculum. The film adaptation – with a screenplay by Caryl herself – went on to win six Welsh BAFTAs and the Spirit of the Festival Award at the 2010 Celtic Media Festival. Lewis’ other screenwriting work includes BBC/S4C thrillers Hinterland and Hidden. Caryl is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and lives with her family on a farm near Aberystwyth. Drift is Caryl Lewis’ debut novel in the English language. Moving between the wild Welsh coast and war-torn Syria, Drift is a love story with a difference, and a hypnotic tale of lost identity, the quest for home and the wondrous resilience of the human spirit.