Tutored Retreat Fiction/Non-Fiction: Kapka Kassabova & Malachy Tallack, Guest: Cal Flyn

Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 13th May - Sat 18th May, 2019
All Day

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

Writing and Place

Creating a strong sense of place is critical to good travel writing, but it is also important in fiction, in memoir, and in nature writing. In this tutored retreat, you will be working closely with two experienced writers of both non-fiction and fiction. With them, you will discuss how to build a rich and convincing sense of place in your work, and how setting can help you tell your story. You will also have the chance to think about other craft elements of your writing, and to consider the connection between place and characters, real and imagined.

Kapka Kassabova is a poet, novelist, and the author of three books of narrative non-fiction: Street Without a Name (2008), Twelve Minutes of Love (2011) and Border (2017). Border was shortlisted for the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan, Baillie-Gifford, Ondaatje, and Duff-Cooper prizes, and named Saltire Book of the Year, Stanford Dolman Book of the Year, and the inaugural Highland Book Prize winner. All of Kapka’s work is fuelled by the power of place. She lives in the Scottish Highlands.

Malachy Tallack has published three books, each exploring ideas and stories about place. His first, Sixty Degrees North (2015), was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Award. His second, The Un-Discovered Islands (2016), was named Illustrated Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. His most recent book, The Valley at the Centre of the World (2018), is a novel set in Shetland, where he grew up. www.malachytallack.com

Cal Flyn is an award-winning author and journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. She worked as an investigative reporter for The Sunday Times and the Telegraph before turning to literary non-fiction. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, was published in 2016 by HarperCollins, and dealt with questions of colonialism and intergenerational guilt. She is currently working on a second book, on the ecology of abandoned places, expected in 2020.

A place on this course will be awarded to the winner of the Travel Writing Bursary.

Bookings