Tiffany Murray's memoir My Family and Other Rock Stars (Fleet, 2024)) was the Sunday Times, The Week, and the Mail ‘Book of the Week’, as well as the Observer Book of the Day. Tiffany’s non-fiction has also appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the Telegraph, Sunday Times Style, GQ, Independent on Sunday and featured on BBC Radio 4. Her novels, Diamond Star Halo (Granta, 2010) Happy Accidents (4th Estate, 2004) and Sugar Hall (Seren, 2014) have variously been shortlisted for the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize and received the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. Tiffany has been a Hay Festival Fiction Fellow, a Fulbright scholar, and she programs Hay Festival/ACW’s Writers at Work. Her dramas set in Iceland, Lava! Lava! Lava!, and Hulda’s Café are available on BBC Sounds.
Writing Yourself In: The personal essay & memoir
This course seeks to introduce emerging writers (and potentially established writers looking to explore non-fiction) to ideas, practices, and debates around non-fiction in all its forms. The tutors will hold a series of workshops and discussion groups looking at the different ways a writer’s personal story can be framed within historical events, cultural patterns, and social phenomenon. A mixture of workshops, discussion groups, and tutorials, will explore how the writer can place their own story in the wider subjects of the climate emergency, the cost of living, political division, cultural trends, whatever you feel your story fits. At the beginning of the course, participants will be led to identify a section of their life, or a subject and a form to work on throughout, so that by the end they will have clearer focus on their project. Workshops will include “Finding Your Subject”, “Soundtracking Your Life”, “Experimenting with Form”, “Using the Tools of Fiction in Non-fiction”, and “Connecting with the Reader”. This course will be supportive, productive, creative, and fun.
Bursaries
One £250 bursary space is available for this course. To apply, please complete this application form
Deadline for applications: Tuesday 15 July 2025.
For further information about the support available, please visit our Financial Assistance page: https://tynewydd.wales/courses-retreats/financial-support/
Tutors
Tiffany Murray
Gary Raymond
Gary Raymond is a novelist, playwright, critic, editor, and broadcaster. He is presenter of the Radio Wales Arts Show for BBC Radio Wales, was a co-founder of Wales Arts Review and its editor for ten years. He is the author of six books. His latest is Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature (Calon Books, 2024). His other non-fiction book is How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics) (Parthian, 2020), a personal takedown of the world’s favourite Christmas movie. His novels include For Those Who Come After (Parthian, 2015), The Golden Orphans (Parthian, 2018), and Angels of Cairo (Parthian, 2021). He is also writer of three BBC radio documentaries, and a stage play about the life of writer Dorothy Edwards. He recently opened a record shop, Grinning Soul Records, in Monmouth town.
Guest Reader
Kathryn Tann (Digital)
Kathryn Tann is a writer, editor and creative producer originally from south Wales. Her debut essay collection, Seaglass, was published by Calon Books in 2024, and she is the host and producer of This Place – a podcast talking to writers and thinkers in the landscapes that shaped them. She is a founding editor and co-director of Folding Rock Magazine, and has a background in publishing and literature programming. Her own work has featured in The Guardian, The Scotsman, Nation.Cymru and Simple Things, among others, and she speaks regularly at events.