Here are the latest newsletters, including detail of the Opening Lines competition deadline Sunday 15 May:
iOpening Lines competition deadline is
Sunday!
In
our Opening Lines contest you can win a review from a
professional editor to help you take your novel to the next
level. You’ll get a full report telling you what’s working well
and what needs developing that will cover structure, pace, prose,
plot, characters and more.
We’ll choose FIVE winners from all entries and all
will receive a full manuscript review.
Looking
for inspiration? Check out this list of 150 of
the most compelling opening lines in literature, or hop on to
twitter and tag us in your favourite!
The first and second prize winners share 50% of the entry fees and the
People's Prize winner gets a mystery prize (previously they've won Community
Membership, feedback reports, flash festival tickets, books, notepads,
and lots of lovely writerly things!).
Plus everyone shortlisted gets published and wins a prize too and all
will be entered into our new annual Retreat West Awards.
We can't wait to read your stories inspired by this month's prompt -
CATCH
I have been having a re-think about the course costs at RW
as I want to keep it affordable for everyone, while also being able
to pay my own living costs. But I started Retreat West in the first
place as I couldn't afford to learn about writing and it's really
important to me that it doesn't become another organisation that is
unaffordable for writers.
So with that in mind, I'd really appreciate it if
you could take this short survey for me to help me decide on what
to charge for courses.
Want
help, advice, cheering on and 1-1 support as you write or revise
your novel?
We're now
accepting applications for The Novel Creator, a fully
mentored course that will teach you all the tools novelists use to
create compelling, emotionally resonant novels with memorable
narrators. So you can use what you learn to write this novel, and
all of the novels you'll write in the future.
This year's course starts on 19th September and ends with an online
event in September 2023 where you get feedback on your novel
premise from agents and indie publishers and make vital industry
connections.
Plus don't forget we meet weekly on Friday mornings
for a flash writing session - join us for flash reading and writing
fun! Pay what you can afford to come along or these sessions are
included with our community membership.
After the
huge success of our first two Online Flash Fest, we're really
excited to be running a Short Story Fest this summer! We have a
fantastic line-up to help develop our short story writing craft.
Join us for a day of workshops hosted by Amanda Saint and Gaynor
Jones who are joined by contemporary short story writers and
publishers.
All sessions are run on Zoom and will be recorded so
everyone who buys a tickets gets to keep the sessions to watch
again as often as they like. Or if you’re in a different time zone,
or just busy that day, you can get a bargain Recordings Only
ticket!
10.00 –
10.45
WELCOME AND KEYNOTE: ANNA VAUGHT – THE INTENSE SNAPSHOT
‘A
short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story
is a photograph; a novel is a film.
LORRIE
MOORE
As someone who writes both novels and short stories, Anna
will talk about the pleasure derived from this short form She
will explore the idea of the snapshot, the short-lived and intense
experience and look at story structure in the light of that, coming
to the end, without which your story is lost.
Anna
is a novelist, essayist, short fiction writer, editor, secondary
English teacher, mentor, campaigner and author of four books,
including 2020’s Saving Lucia and Famished. Her work
is published in journals, anthologies and the national press and
she has been a monthly columnist for The Bookseller. New
novel, The Zebra and Lord Jones, is on agency submission,
while a book on writing, The Alchemy, is launching with
Unbound. Anna’s second story collection, Ravished, is
published by Reflex Press this autumn and her memoir, These
Envoys of Beauty, in spring 2023. Anna also speaks as a
guest university lecturer, at events on a community and national
level, and is a tutor for Jericho Writers.
11.00 –
12.30
THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY WITH SAM JORDISON
Sam
Jordison will explain the power and importance of short stories and
why they can do things that novels can’t. He will also look at
their sometimes precarious place within the UK publishing industry,
the importance of competitions and what he looks out for in stories
as an editor.
Sam
Jordison is a co-director of the award winning publisher Galley
Beggar Press, which hosts an annual Short Story Prize. He has
worked on editorial for books like Alex Pheby’s Mordew, Lucy
Ellmann’s Ducks Newburyport, Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A
Half-formed Thing and Sleby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho.
He is also the author of several works of non-fiction and a
journalist and book reviewer.
12.30 – 13.00 SOCIAL EVENT
Chat
with other writers attending the festival in the Zoom breakout
rooms.
13.00 –
14.00 LUNCH
14.00 –
15.30
FRESH APPROACHES TO THE SHORT STORY WITH SARAH SCHOFIELD
This
workshop will give you the opportunity to try out new ideas and
approaches to refresh your short story writing. You’ll be led
through writing activities and have an opportunity to share
creatively together. Sarah will look at and discuss some
contemporary short story examples to help inspire new writing. It
will be an enriching, creative and supportive session that you
will leave with a range of story ideas, short story seeds, that are
ready to nurture and grow beyond the workshop.
Sarah
Schofield is an award-winning writer of short fiction. Her stories
have appeared in several Comma Press anthologies, Best British
Short Stories 2020 (Salt), Synaesthesia Magazine,
Morning Star, Woman’s Weekly and many others. Sarah is a
Creative Writing lecturer at Edge Hill University. Her debut
collection Safely Gathered In was published by Comma
Press in November 2021. She is judge of the Short Story category in
the 2022 Retreat
West Prize.
15.45
-16.45
UNSETTLING YOUR READER WITH JOANNA CAMPBELL
Joanna
Campbell will deconstruct short stories in which the characters
lead
apparently ordinary lives. She will explain how you can find
different ways of introducing hints of the extraordinary — the
small shifts of tone and language which warn the reader
something is not right — and how to capture the crucial moment the
status quo is interrupted.
Joanna
is a full-time writer from the Cotswolds. Her short story collection, When
Planets Slip Their Tracks, was shortlisted for the Rubery
International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill
University Prize. Her novel, Instructions for the Working Day,
will be published in August 2022 by Fairlight Books. Her
novella-in-flash, Sybilla, won the inaugural National Flash
Fiction Day Novella-in- Flash Award and will be published in June
2022. Her novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was a
runner-up in the inaugural Bath Novella-in-Flash Award and
published in the anthology, How To Make A Window Snake, by Ad
Hoc Fiction. Joanna’s short stories have won first place in the
Exeter Writers competition, the Bath Short Story Award Local
Prize, the London Short Story Prize, the Magic Oxygen Literary
Prize and the Retreat West Short Story Prize. Her flash-fiction won
second place in the 2017 Bridport Prize, for which her short
stories have been shortlisted many times.
FESTIVAL
CLOSE 17.00 – 17.30
With
readings from the winning writers in the 2021 RW Short Story Prize.
FESTIVAL
COSTS
We
have a reduced rate price for our Community Members so if you want
to join first, you can do that
here. Otherwise use the Non-Members or Recordings
Only links below.
No comments:
Post a Comment