Inspired by early manuscripts submitted to and archived by the George Padmore Institute over the last 40 years, including from descendants of the Windrush Generation, Maame Blue will lead this creative writing workshop to help new and emerging writers develop work inspired by the theme of ‘Beginnings’. As with any new journey, this workshop will hopefully pull at a thread that could lead to a tapestry of new stories.

Join author Maame Blue as she leads this workshop showing you how to add depth to your complex characters by breaking down fictional platonic, romantic or family relationship narratives, looking at point of view, and exploring historical context.

Are you working on a multi-character family narrative? Are you struggling to balance your story alongside the development of each character? Perhaps you’re unsure of which angle to take?

Join Maame Blue as she takes you through guided readings from brilliant novelists writing about family, alongside useful writing exercises and feedback points to help you develop your own approach to writing about family.

This live workshop will take place via Zoom — on AEST Time.

Do you want to create more complex characters in your writing? Join award-winning author Maame Blue for her flagship workshop on crafting complex characters. Through close readings of contemporary fiction, discussions and writing exercises, you’ll be on your way to creating multilayered characters that can drive a narrative forward!

This is an exciting opportunity to fit creative writing into your hectic week. Running as an informal rolling programme, you can come for just one term or stay throughout the year, knowing that for a precious hour you’ll be thrown ideas that will take your writing in new directions.

Running for 11 weeks (27 April to 6 July 2023) we will be experimenting with poetry and prose, working with dialogue and descriptive language, finding sources of inspiration in unexpected places and playing with imagery and figures of speech.

Our unmissable creative writing retreat is back for a second year – with fresh content, award-winning novelists, dedicated creative time and a community of fellow writers to help you put pen to paper and write.

Do you love reading about messy romantic entanglements, fraught family interactions or the multi-layered relationship with self? Would you like help to create more characters that drive these kinds of narratives?

Learn how to create your own complex characters by utilising context and breaking down character motivations.

Learn from some of the best genre-defying fiction writers experimenting with the notion of family, to help your own writing. Join award-winning author Maame Blue for this 3-hour online workshop.

This course will cover the basic aspects of novel writing, and is ideal for intermediate students who have an idea for a novel or a novel in progress. The syllabus will cover a wide variety of techniques including character, point of view, dialogue, structure and style. There is also an element of workshop in this course.

Running for 11 weeks (3 May to 12 July 2023) at 19:40 - 21:40 on Wednesday evenings, we will be covering issues of craft and content, including character, point of view, structure and style; examination of technical elements including dialogue, scene-building, and effective writing on a sentence-by-sentence level; keeping the reader's interest; workshopping of students' work.

During this one day online session, attendees will be given the space to pull from their own internal worlds and knowledge of working with people one-on-one, to take part in creative writing lessons that will teach them how to create authentic, multi-layered characters on the page. This will be especially valuable to members who want an alternative creative outlet for taking care of their own wellbeing as practitioners outside of the consulting room.

This event will include the following:

• Incorporating self-perception into your character creation

• Looking at examples in fiction

• Learning how to create context for characters

• Writing our own complex characters.

This is an exciting opportunity to fit creative writing into your hectic week. Running as an informal rolling programme, you can come for just one term or stay throughout the year, knowing that for a precious hour you’ll be thrown ideas that will take your writing in new directions.

Running for 11 weeks (27 April to 6 July 2023) we will be experimenting with poetry and prose, working with dialogue and descriptive language, finding sources of inspiration in unexpected places and playing with imagery and figures of speech.