Spring School
All Members of my Tribe are Liars: Making up the Truth
18th - 22nd March 2013
It is sometimes said that all writing is autobiographical. Not everyone would agree, but they might be lying. Or they might have a different idea of the truth. In this five-day intensive course we'll be looking at how the facts and the imagination can interact in prose, poetry, memoir and film.
Spring School is open to everyone, although those attending should be committed writers. The ideal candidate is an aspiring writer who possesses a serious creative intent to see their work develop. Beginners and writers with more experience are equally welcome. Fee £300, to include lunches and evening events.
2013 Tutors:
William Fiennes is the bestselling author of the award-winnning The Snow Geese and The Music Room, and Founding Director of the charity First Story, which promotes writing in UK secondary schools. He has contributed essays, stories and reviews to many publications, including The London Review of Books, Granta, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and Intelligent Life.
Tina Gharavi is an award-winning filmmaker/screenwriter. Her work has been broadcast internationally (ITV/Channel Four (UK), Showtime (US) and selected for Sundance) and she is noted for documentary, fiction and cross-platform interactive work. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (USA), a Cultural Leadership Fellowship (Hong Kong), she recently completed her feature debut film, I Am Nasrine, a coming of age story of teenage asylum-seekers from Iran.
W.N. Herbert is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing. He has published seven volumes of poetry and four pamphlets, and he is widely anthologised. He is editor of several anthologies including Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry (with Matthew Hollis); and Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry with (Yang Lian). His latest poetry collection is Omnesia (Bloodaxe, 2013).
Helen Limon is a graduate of Newcastle University's PhD programme where she is a teaching associate. She has published a number of picture books and rights to the award-winning My Mother is Troll have recently been sold for translation into Spanish. Her first novel for children Om Shanti, Babe won the 2011Diverse Voices Award and was published by Frances Lincoln in September 2012.
Anna Woodford’s poetry collection Birdhouse (Salt, 2010) was a winner of the international Crashaw Prize and selected by The Guardian in a round-up of poetry books of the year. Her pamphlet Party Piece (Smith/Doorstop, 2009) was a winner in the Poetry Business Competitionand Trailer (Five Leaves, 2007) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She has received a major Leverhulme Award, an Eric Gregory Award, an Arvon/Jerwood Apprenticeship, a Hawthorden Fellowship and has a PhD from Newcastle University.
This is the sixth year Spring School has been running at Newcastle University, with a different theme each year.
Feedback from previous years:-
- I feel impressed, happy and inspired
- The format of the course is perfect
- I had a splendid time, the tutors and students were friendly and supportive
- The course exceeded my expectations and was great value for money
- Very exciting and inspirational
- Plenty of encouragement and support for less experienced writers, while those further ahead were also stretched
- The variety of ways of writing got me out of my comfort zone
- It was very helpful to meet other students over an extended period of time to discuss work and creative writing issues
Spring School course fee £300
To book a place visit the webstore. Alternatively contact Melanie Birch (Melanie.Birch@ncl.ac.uk; 0191 222 7619).