Date/Time
Date(s) - Fri 7th Jun - Sat 29th Jun, 2024
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Adventures in essay and lyrical non-fiction
Award-winning poet and writer Jen Hadfield invites you to join her online for a month as she guides a group of 12 participants in an exploration of writing essays and lyrical non-fiction.
Essay and lyrical non-fiction are an increasingly popular genre among writers, as more and more non-fiction titles appear on bookshelves. As each of us maps how our unique perception tangles with the world, discussion, short exercises and the sharing of work carry us through experiments in mystery, voice, structure and idea.
As part of this course, you will also be invited to attend an online Guest Writer event with Luke Thompson, writer, editor and co-founder of small publisher, Guillemot Press.
Moniack in a Month: The Passionate Essay includes:
- a short introductory welcome session
- four stimulating online workshops, preceded by optional drop-in social time
- one 30-minute tutorial
- a Guest Writer event
- a final ceilidh session – sharing of work
- Contact and support from your community of writers via Google Classroom (optional)
- Drop-ins before each workshop to help you get to know your group (optional)
- Support from your Moniack Mhor host
Workshop 1 – The Passionate Essay
Our week’s work will kick off with a sharing of passions. What are your subjects? What do they mean to you?
Workshop 2 – The Questing Essay
Knowledge, fact and the wrangling of information versus experience, uncertainty and exploration.
Workshop 3 – The Experimental Essay
What shapes can an essay take? What about narrative arc and rhythm? What about time? What about sentences?
Workshop 4 – The Essaying ‘I’
As some publishers encourage writers to tilt towards memoir in their non-fiction manuscripts, how much of yourself do you want to share? What is your essaying voice?
Guest Writer Event
In an hour-long event that will also be open to the public, Luke Thompson, writer, editor and co-founder of Guillemot Press, will read from his new book Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum: Conversations with Other Animals, and be in conversation with Jen Hadfield. There will also be time for questions from the audience.
Timetable
Week 1 Friday 7 June 18:00–20:00 Welcome Session and Workshop 1
Week 2 Friday 14 June 18:00–20:00 Workshop 2
Week 2 Monday 17 June 19:00–20:00 Guest Writer Event
Week 3 Friday 21 June 18:00–20:00 Workshop 3
Week 4 Friday 28 June 18:00–20:00 Workshop 4
Week 4 Saturday 29 June 18:00–19:30 Ceilidh
Tutorials
Your one-to-one tutorial with Jen will be scheduled when the course starts.
Tutor
Jen Hadfield lives in Shetland with her family. Her first collection, Almanacs, won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. Her second collection, Nigh-No-Place, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition in 2012. Her fourth collection The Stone Age, published by Picador in 2021, explores neurodiversity and won the prestigious Highland Book Prize 2021. Storm Pegs, a lyrical non-fiction hymn to Shetland, is forthcoming in 2024.
Guest Writer
Luke Thompson is a writer and publisher from Cornwall whose current work explores other animals and our relationships with them. Recent books include Treasures of Cornwall (Macmillan, 2023), A Guillemot Guide to Very Small Press Publishing (Guillemot Press, 2022) and the poetry collection Singing About Melon ( Shearsman, 2020). His latest, Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum: Conversations with Other Animals, dives into some of the weirder ways in which people have attempted to converse with other species or imagined doing so and will be published by Ortac Press in 2024. Luke is editor of Guillemot Press and a senior lecturer at Falmouth University. www.lukeathompson.com
Fees
The full fee for this online course is £360. A deposit of £100 is required to secure your place, which is non-refundable after a 14-day cooling-off period. The balance payment of £260 is due six weeks before the course begins.
Bursaries are available, and you also have the option to pay in instalments, please email online@moniackmhor.org.uk to enquire.
All activity takes place on Zoom, and workshops include a short break. Moniack Mhor staff will be on hand to support you during your course.
For more information please email online@moniackmhor.org.uk.
Access
Please let us know in your booking form if you have any access requirements when working online so we can do our best to support you. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our Terms & Conditions before booking.