Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 19th Sep - Sat 24th Sep, 2016
5:00pm - 10:00am
Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT
A door opens, a door shuts. In between you have had a glimpse: a garden, a person, a rainstorm, a dragonfly, a heart, a city.’(Sylvia Plath.) How do we ‘glimpse’ our own lives, as if for the first time? Experience the thrill of the unknown, in our own backyard? Join tutors Caroline Bird & Karen Campbell to explore new ways of seeing, new ways of writing, and hidden doors. Through group workshops in poetry and prose and one-to-one sessions, the tutors will help you hone your writer’s eye, and experiment with how best to get your ideas on the page.
Caroline Bird is an award-winning poet, with four collections published by Carcanet. Her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was only 15. Her second collection, Trouble Came to the Turnip, was published in September 2006 to critical acclaim. Watering Can (2009) achieved a ‘Poetry Book Society Recommendation’ and her fourth collection, The Hat-Stand Union, (2013) was described by Simon Armitage as ‘spring-loaded, funny, sad and deadly.’ She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was short-listed for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001. She was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010, and was the youngest writer on the list both times. She was one of the five official poets at London Olympics 2012. Her poem, The Fun Palace, which celebrates the life and work of Joan Littlewood, is now erected on the Olympic Site outside the main stadium. She is also a playwright: her new version of The Trojan Women premiered at the Gate Theatre in 2012. Her original play, Chamber Piece, was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize 2014, and toured as part of Lyric Hammersmith’s Secret Theatre season. In 2013, Caroline was short-listed for Most Promising New Playwright at the Off-West-End Awards. She wrote a radical new adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Northern Stage in 2015, and is now writing the book and lyrics for Dennis the Menace the Musical for The Old Vic. She is currently working on her fifth collection of poetry.
Karen Campbell, originally from Glasgow, but now based in Galloway, writes contemporary fiction and graduated with Distinction from Glasgow University’s Creative Writing Masters in 2003. Before turning to writing, she was a police officer, and her first four novels focus on the people behind the uniform: The Twilight Time, After the Fire, Shadowplay, and Proof of Life.
Karen won a Scottish Arts Council New Writers Award in 2002, Best New Scottish Writer Award in 2009, and Shadowplay was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger in 2010. Her fifth novel This is Where I Am, a story about a Somali refugee living in Glasgow, was published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Circus, and was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. Her new novel Rise – about Scotland in the run-up to the Independence Referendum – is out now.
A regular tutor on both adult and young people’s fiction courses, Karen teaches creative writing in a variety of establishments, and has run writing workshops and outreach for schools, prisons, hospitals and other organisations. She was recently awarded a Creative Scotland Artist’s Bursary for research into her next novel, set in Italy in WW2, which will tell the story of the role US Buffalo soldiers played in the liberation of Tuscany. More at www.karencampbell.co.uk
Michel Faber’s last novel is called the Book of Strange New Things. Winner of multiple awards, his other novels include The Crimson Petal and the White, The Fahrenheit Twins, The Apple and the Whitbread-shortlisted Under The Skin.
Free to all Highland residents aged 16 – 25.
Bookings
This event is fully booked. Please email info@moniackmhor.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.