Jane Phillips completed a two year MA course at City University, London – Creative Writing, Novels (Crime), in October 2016. Was it expensive – yes she says, was it worth it – yes again. What did I learn? I'll tell you in November she promises – with some handouts from the course.
Les Brookes attended a couple of Arvon courses and is happy to present on them. The courses he attended were widely separated in time, 1982 and 2011, and in content – the first tutored by two poets, the founders of Arvon, and the second by two novelists, Philip Hensher and Sam North. Les will focus on what he gained from them and the qualities of a good tutor.
Hannah Hooton will tell us about the Creative writing Access course she did on Creative Writing, English Literature and Journalism, and the Bachelor's course on Writing and Film Studies, and her Master's course on Creative Writing: Scriptwriting, so she has done so has plenty of resources to talk about.
Beverley Steffert will give an overview of Pillar Alessandra’s workshop – this was given non-stop by an effervescent American screen writer, who in typical American super-motivation style promised to stop us procrastinating, get our story into the wide world, and add zing (whatever that is) to our dialogue. This will be contrasted with a local adult education course in Cambridge who had everyone write their idea for a story in summary and then in each class had us move the story forward using a story writing framework. These seem typically American and typically English ways of doing things!