Every year we hold several one-day masterclasses to support our students’ writing practice. These are held in the Easter holidays and in June.

Each student on the two-year programme has two masterclasses included in their course fee every year and can purchase additional masterclasses at a discount. The discount codes are on your course page and you can book through our Eventbrite page. The workshops are also available to writers outside the programme for a fee.

Easter Masterclasses

Friday 27th March at the Jubilee Library, Brighton - How to Write Historical Fiction that Sells with Frances Quinn. Find out how to bring the past alive and make your historical novel compelling enough to hook an agent and win a publishing deal.

Saturday 28th March at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – Improving your Dialogue with Beth Miller. Learn some tips and tricks on how to test out and hone your dialogue.

 Saturday 28th March at the Jubilee Library, Brighton- Creating Memorable Characters with Laura Wilkinson Learn how to make credible and complex characters that readers care about.

Sunday 29th March at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – The Shape of a Story with Susannah Waters. Learn how to keep a reader engaged in any storyline: the beats along the way, the arrows launched, the resistance and desires driving on the characters.

Sunday 29th March at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – Life Writing and Imagination with Hannah Vincent. Find out how to bring imagination into life writing, to engage the reader in character, setting and story.

Saturday 11th April online  - The Power of Editing with Stefan Mohammed. An in-depth exploration of the editing process, from solidifying your intentions through close reading, to tightening plot and character arcs, to ensuring that your chosen themes are being effectively communicated.

Sunday 11th April online – Imagery, symbolism, metaphor in prose with John McCullough. Improve your use of symbolism in fiction as well as exploring when to use and restrict imagery.

 Summer Masterclasses

Friday 12th June at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – Plotting with Julia Crouch. Learn how to shape a story, looking at the thinking behind constructing a plot and taking it forward into practical techniques and processes.

Saturday 13th June at the Jubilee Library, Brighton - Therapeutic Writing for the Self with Kate Gillhespie. A creative and experiential session to bring you back to yourself, what you need to be effective as a writer and how you can take your focus back to the process and not the product.

Saturday 13th June at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – Managing Pace with Beth Miller. This practical workshop will break pace down and explore techniques for using it more effectively in your writing: from sentence to paragraph to scene, and beyond.

Sunday 14th June, at the Jubilee Library, Brighton – Illuminating the Everyday with Lulah Ellender. Using lists, photographs, objects and fragments to explore the stories that lie hidden within the everyday and learn how they can hold narratives and themes that lift your life writing off the page.

Sunday 14th June, online – Conjuring Magic in your Writing with Sally O’Reilly. Explore portals to magic worlds and stories that are set entirely in invented places as well as  how to weave magic into the everyday.

Friday 26th June, online – Writing Otherness with Sharlene Teo. Explore ways of navigating and presenting characters in fiction by confronting our biases, privileges and stereotyped perceptions and writing different perspectives from our own.

Sunday 28th June, online - Dramatic Tension with Tammye Huf. How to hold your readers’ attention and keep them on the edge of their seats.

To book your place, visit our Eventbrite page and, if you’re an existing student, use the discount code on your course page to secure your free places.