Retreat West Zoom workshops

 Starting this Sunday and beyond:

Last chance for Sunday's Zoom workshop Writing the Sea with Martha Lane Amanda Saint Apr 5 Photo by Ray Harrington on Unsplash Writing the Sea Sun 7 Apr 2024 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM BST Join Martha Lane for a fun-filled session focused on using the power of the sea in our stories. Stormy, calm, murky or clear – the ocean is a living, churning idea machine. In this generative workshop we will dive into a series of writing exercises designed to explore the ocean in interesting and unusual ways, as setting, metaphor and even character. We will discuss the different relationships people can have with the sea and how that might affect the stories you want to write, and explore how the ocean is the perfect inspiration for engrossing and vivid storytelling. Workshop Host: Martha Lane is a prose writer from the blustery North East. She writes extensively about grief, nature, class and all things unrequited. Many of her stories can be found online at http://marthalane.co.uk. Her speculative novella (about grief and nature of course), Lies Over the Ocean, is available to buy on Amazon. She loves writing, and facilitating workshops is such a lovely way to share the joy! Book here Upcoming workshops We’ve just added some new workshops to the calendar so lots more opportunities to get writing and hone your craft. Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash Writing Striking Settings That Work Hard Sat 13 Apr 2024 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM BST Join Amanda Saint for a workshop looking at how you can create settings in short stories, flashes and micros that do some heavy lifting to develop your storyline, characters and themes. When word count is small, you have to make sure that any you give to descriptions are really working hard for you. We'll look at examples of stories of different lengths and you'll do writing exercises to get you creating settings and descriptions that immerse your reader in the world you're creating and develop atmosphere, move the story on, and reveal more about your characters. Come along to get ideas, inspiration and new drafts of stories where your descriptions are powerhouses! Workshop Host: Amanda Saint started Retreat West in 2012 and launched Retreat West Books in 2017 (Winner: Most Innovative Publisher 2020 Saboteur Awards), which published 24 books between 2018 and 2023. In 2022, she launched the WestWord literary magazine. She has been designing and teaching online courses, and live workshops, for many years and has worked as an editor on hundreds of manuscripts. She’s the author of two novels, As If I Were A River (2016) and Remember Tomorrow (2019), and a novella-in-flash, Pressure Drop (2024). She writes The Mindful Writer and The Tao of Storytelling. Amanda’s short stories have been widely published; long/shortlisted in the Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition, Fish Flash Fiction Prize, Ink Tears Short Story Prize, Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition, Flash 500 and V300; nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023; and won the Editor’s Choice Prize at 101 Words. Book here Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash Breathless Prose with Debbi Voisey Sun 21 Apr 2024 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM BST This workshop will be all about choosing the right words and the right way to put them on the page to create impact, and about being original and surprising. We will read examples and create some beautiful and surprising prose of our own – including attempting a breathless paragraph that weaves a wonderful tale. By the end of the two hours you will have a first draft - or lots of notes - that you can work on and send out into the world. Please bring along an example of beautiful prose in a story you’ve read and love. You will have a chance to share some of these, depending on time available. There will be other examples provided by Debbi. Workshop Host: Debbi writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She had two novellas-in-flash published in 2021 (Only About Love with Fairlight Books, and The 10:25 with Flash:The International Short-Short Story Press). Only About Love received a special mention in the 2022 Saboteur Awards and was shortlisted for the Arnold Bennett Prize 2022. Debbi’s novel, The Reset, will publish with Bloodhound Books in 2025. Debbi works with Retreat West running Friday Flashing sessions, the Monthly Micro Workshops, and providing editorial feedback on stories. Book here Photo by Natalia Y. on Unsplash Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Reflections on Fairy Tale Retellings​ Sun 12 May 2024 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM BST Join Ingrid Jendrzejewski for a 2-hour workshop inspired by fairytales. While perhaps not common enough to be considered a genre unto themselves, retellings of fairy tales, fables, and folk tales pop up with considerable frequency in literary journals. ​Making use of traditional tales can be an engaging and effective method of questioning the past, reframing the present and imagining the future. It can also be deliciously fun. ​In this session, we’ll look at some examples of flash that have borrowed from fairy and folk tales in various ways, and try our hand at writing our own.​ Workshop Host: Ingrid Jendrzejewski studied creative writing and English literature at the University of Evansville, then physics at the University of Cambridge. Her work has been published in places like Passages North, The Los Angeles Review, Jellyfish Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and The Conium Review, and in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the A Room Of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction among other competitions, and her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for BFFA’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. She serves as a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day, editor-in-chief of FlashBack Fiction and a flash editor at JMWW. Links to some of Ingrid’s work can be found at www.ingridj.com and she tweets @LunchOnTuesday Book here © 2024 Amanda Saint Apt 3735, Chynoweth House, Trevissome Park Truro, TR4 8UN, UK