Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

This one-day course will explore our reasons for writing, and the resources available to the writer of fiction – memory, research and the creative imagination.

Whether you’re a beginner in creative writing or a more advanced writer looking for new ideas and inspiration, this 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 can either be taken on its own or as in conjunction with the following day’s course, ‘A Sense of Place’.

The course has been devised with a group of 30 in mind; however, the presence of two tutors means that, apart from a short period at the beginning of the course and another at the end, the teaching will take place in groups of 15. Each group will have two sessions with each tutor. 

The sessions

9.30-11.00: Session 1. Why do we write? / What are our sources?
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-1.00: Session 2. Working with memory
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-3.30: Session 3: Working with the imagination
3.30-4.00: Tea
4.00-5.30: Session 4: How can research help our writing? / Drawing it all together

Session 1. Why do we write?/What are our sources?

There are many reasons for writing. We shall discuss these before breaking into two separate groups to address possible ways into a piece of writing.

Session 2. Working with memory

However far we move from our own experience, memory is likely to play a very significant role in our writing. This session will explore that role through a combination of discussion and practical work.

Session 3: Working with the imagination
Building on the work carried out in the previous session, we shall go on to discuss and experience the operation of the creative imagination.

Session 4: How can research help our writing?/Drawing it all together

The writer’s research can take many forms. In this session we shall discuss some of these and explore the pleasures – and pitfalls – of working with researched material, before the two sub-groups are drawn together for a final discussion of the day’s work.

The tutors

Jem Poster is emeritus professor of creative writing, Aberystwyth University. 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, A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb and The Strange Adventures of H. Poster and Burton are co-authors of a handbook for fiction writers, The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write.