Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 30th Oct - Sat 4th Nov, 2023
All Day
Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT
People, Memory and Truth: How to Write Dazzling Non-fiction
This course teaches the crafts of writing non-fiction which matters and moves. Tutors Horatio Clare and Amy Liptrot will cover a wide spectrum, from recording experience through to research, from characters who live to structures that sing, from issues of law and ethics to crafting beautiful prose. You will look at the art and the business of planning, designing and writing long and short-form prose, essays and books. The techniques studied on this course will apply to journalism, memoir, biography, travel and nature writing.
Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm in Orkney. Her bestselling memoir The Outrun won the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and the PEN Ackerely Prize for memoir; and has been translated into 16 languages and adapted into a film. Her second book The Instant was published in 2022 and was another bestseller. She lives in Yorkshire with her family.
Horatio Clare’s books include Running for the Hills (Somerset Maugham Award), A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships (Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year), Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Branford Boase Award), The Light in the Dark, Orison for a Curlew and Something of his Art: Walking to Lubeck with J S Bach. His latest book is Heavy Light: a story of madness, mania and healing. Horatio broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 4, notably for From Our Own Correspondent, and presents Radio 3’s acclaimed annual Sound Walks series at Christmas. His latest series for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds is Is Psychiatry Working? He writes for the Financial Times, the Spectator, Conde Nast Traveller (where he is a contributing editor), and many other papers, websites and magazines. Horatio lectures in non-fiction at the University of Manchester.
Nancy Campbell’s latest book, Thunderstone, is a memoir of life after lockdown in an old Buccaneer caravan. In 2020 Nancy received the Royal Geographical Society Ness Award for environmental writing for a decade-long response to the polar regions across non-fiction (The Library of Ice), poetry (Disko Bay) and artist’s books (How to Say ‘I Love You’ in Greenlandic). Closer to home, the poems written during her two-year role as Canal Laureate for The Poetry Society were installed along the waterways where they could be seen projected on wharves at night, stencilled on towpaths, or engraved into fish gates; they are collected in the pamphlet Navigations. She has held numerous international research residencies, most recently as Visiting Professor of Literature at the Free University of Berlin.
Fees
The full fee for this course is £650. This includes your accommodation in a single room with shared bathroom, all meals, hot drinks and snacks from Monday afternoon until Saturday morning, and your tuition. For more information about the practicalities of our courses and retreats, please visit our About the Courses page.
A limited number of en-suite rooms are available for a £50 surcharge, and a limited number of Twin Room places are available at a discounted price of £600 per person. When booking a Twin Room place, please tell us in the comments box which gender you are and which gender(s) you are comfortable sharing a room with. This information will remain confidential.
A deposit is required to secure your place, which is non-refundable after a 14-day cooling-off period. The balance payment of £500 is due six weeks before the course begins. If you would like to pay the full amount earlier than this or at the point of booking, please call our booking office on 01463 592 828 or email info@moniackmhor.org.uk.
Please let us know if you have any access requirements, for example a ground floor bedroom and / or access to a wheelchair-accessible shower room. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Bookings
This event is fully booked. Please email info@moniackmhor.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.