Non-Fiction Tutored Retreat: Donald S Murray & Kapka Kassabova, Guest: Richard Beard

Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 30th Jul - Sat 4th Aug, 2018
5:00pm - 10:00am

Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT

Crafting a Narrative

What is the real-life story or specialist subject you wish to explore in writing? And what is the best form for your content? Over the course of this tutored retreat, you will be working closely with two experienced writers of narrative and themed non-fiction. You will have a chance to identify the narrative focus in your story, think about how to structure your material, and consider other craft aspects of non-fiction such as tone of voice, whose story you are telling, and how to sustain a long piece of writing.

Donald S Murray was a teacher of English for 30 years. Since leaving that profession, he has written full-time. His non-fiction work includes The Guga Hunters, Italian Chapel, Orkney, and Herring Tales. The latter was widely reviewed – from the Daily Record to the Economist – and like his book, The Guga Stone, chosen as one of the Guardian’s Nature Books of the Year. He has received the Jessie Kesson and Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowships in recent years. His most recent book is The Dark Stuff – Stories from The Peatlands. His Gaelic play Sequamur was performed throughout Scotland, including the Edinburgh Festival, and also in Belfast, London and in Flanders Field Museum in Belgium. He was chosen as one of Scottish Literature’s representatives in the Pisa Book Festival, Italy in 2016.

Kapka Kassabova is a poet and the author of three books of non-fiction and two novels. Border: a journey to the edge of Europe (2017) has been shortlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, the Saltire Book Awards, the Gordon Burns Prize and The Highland Book Prize (2018).

Richard Beard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones, and Damascus, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His most recent novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and he is the author of four books of narrative non-fiction, including the 2017 memoir The Day That Went Missing. Formerly Secretary to the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, his first job was as chambermaid at the St Columba Hotel on Iona.

Please note: there are no workshops on this course.

A place on this course has been awarded to the winner of the Travel Writing Bursary.

Bookings