Inspire, invigorate and enrich your writing

We are delighted to welcome Vanessa Gebbie back to Gladstone’s Library for another busy creative writing week.

Perhaps there’s an unfinished novel under the bed that needs a fresh start. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to write, never found the right time, and now aren’t sure how to start. Perhaps you’ve just mislaid your writing mojo? Whatever the reason, give yourself the gift of a week at Gladstone’s – the perfect place to focus on your writing with the support of an experienced mentor and teacher of writing who was also one of our first Writers in Residence.

Vanessa is a novelist, a writer of award-winning short fictions of all lengths, a poet, editor and tutor. Author of 10 books, including Short Circuit: Art of the Short Story (Salt), she has taught for The Word Factory, The Arts Council, New Writing South, The Arvon Foundation, London’s Spread the Word, and for writing organisations in Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Austria among many others.

The course will be informal but very focussed, as you shed all the other roles you have to play, keeping a firm hold on your writer’s hat. Using examples by well-known writers, explore all the fascinating elements that work together to create marvellous fiction. You’ll spend the mornings in a variety of workshops, exploring where and how to find inspiration, how to create vibrant characters, voices and settings. Experiment with poetry and explore ways of shaping and reshaping your work. In the afternoons you will have plenty of time to practice the new skills you have learned, and to discuss your own work and process with Vanessa in a series of private one-to ones. Or, of course, there are the walks, the gloriously welcoming Gladstone Room, or the library itself to inspire you. And in the evenings, after supper, it’s back to work again with the team, as not a moment is wasted to strengthen you as a writer.

By the end of the course you will, most importantly, understand yourself better as a creative being. The short story writers will, having written and edited several new pieces of work, have at least a few pieces of short short fiction ready to submit for publication. Some writers may have complete short stories almost ready to go too. Certainly, you will have created new characters, new voices, new, fresh vibrant settings which you can revisit and deepen in the coming weeks and months. For those with lengthier projects, you will have enriched your work-in-progress, and with Vanessa’s support, nudged it on to the next stage.

Residential prices start from £540, non-residential from £370. Discount rates for clergy and students apply.

For more information or to book, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].