Creative writing course open for booking

Writing tutors include Louis de Bernieres and Joanne Harris

Booking has opened for the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival's popular five-day residential creative writing course. Among the authors giving masterclasses at this year's course, based at Corpus Christi College, are Louis de Bernières, pictured, and Joanne Harris. The course, Finding the Plot: A Course for Aspiring Fiction-writers, is led by two knowledgeable tutors who are themselves well-known writers of fiction, Jem Poster and Anjali Joseph. It offers a remarkable opportunity to experience life as a member of a creative community. Living, dining, learning and writing in one of Oxford’s most attractive historic colleges, participants will be able to extend their understanding of their craft in the company of like-minded individuals. For more information and to find out how to register, click here.

2023

2022

Festival information:

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.