Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Whether you are a beginner in creative writing or a more advanced writer looking for new ideas and inspiration, this one-day event may be exactly what you need. Designed by two professional writers with long experience of teaching creative writing at university level, the programme will address the writer’s art and craft in ways both practical and thought-provoking, involving both writing and the discussion of writing. The focus will be primarily on fiction, but writers of poetry and creative non-fiction are likely to gain useful insights from the event.

Highlighting matters relating to the fiction-writer’s representation of time and the establishing of historical perspective and plausibility, this course can either be taken on its own or as a follow-on from the festival’s earlier creative writing course, A Sense of Place, on 30 March.

The course has been devised with a group of 30 in mind; however, the presence of two tutors means that almost all of the teaching will take place in groups of 15. Each group will have two sessions with each tutor. 

Professor Jem Poster is emeritus professor of creative writing, Aberystwyth University, and affiliated lecturer in creative writing with Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education. He is author of a collection of poetry, Brought to Light, and two novels, Courting Shadows and Rifling Paradise. Sarah Burton, founder and former director of Cambridge University’s MSt in creative writing, is the author of Impostors and A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb.

Timetable
9.30-11.00: Session 1. Introduction/The importance of time
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-1.00: Session 2. Playing with time
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-3.30: Session 3: Historical fiction: research
3.30-4.00: Tea
4.00-5.30: Session 4: Historical fiction: dialogue/Drawing it all together

Programme details