Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Whether you’re 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.

This course highlights the ways in which well-judged description can enrich our writing. It can either be taken on its own or as the second part of a full weekend of creative writing alongside the creative writing course on Saturday March 26.

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.

The sessions

9.30am-11am – Session 1: Introduction/ What kind of detail, and how much?
11am-11.30am – Coffee
11.30am-1pm – Session 2: Describing character
1pm-2pm – Lunch
2pm-3.30pm – Session 3: Describing place
3.30pm-4pm – Tea
4pm-5.30pm – Session 4: Integrating description/conclusion

The tutors

Jem Poster is emeritus professor of creative writing, Aberystwyth University. He is the 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, as well as a novel, The Strange Adventures of H, shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Fiction Prize.