Faber & Faber

Friday 10 to Sunday 12 September 2010

Jaffé & Neale Bookshop
1 Middle Row
Chipping Norton
Oxfordshire OX7 5NH

Course fee: £375.00 (inclusive of VAT) [book online]

How do writers reconstitute their lives and experiences into artistic expressions? How can the world, its inhabitants and their stories, be transformed by the imagination, distilled into words, and come to stand for that which is universal? How might style, characterization, setting and intrigue be used to release or enhance an author’s particular preoccupation and their personal material? How might ideas or partially written manuscripts be developed into realistic and compelling fictions, populated by characters drawn with anatomical substance and psychological naturalism?
 
Through workshops and discussions held in the inspirational and charming environment of Jaffe and Neale bookshop, novelists Rachel Cusk and Sarah Hall will address these challenges.

The course will encourage intuition and planning in the writing process, with exercises focused on freestyle drafting and editing. Participants will be encouraged to think about their most urgent and interesting sources of inspiration, and will gain insight into the relationship between the experience of the self and sympathetic, vibrant literary depictions.

The course includes:

•    Intensive tuition with Sarah Hall and Rachel Cusk
•    A beautiful daily artisan lunch
•    Regular coffee breaks
•    A Friday night reading in the bookshop by Rachel Cusk and Sarah Hall
•    A handy course pack including local hotel recommendations
•    A special discount off Faber books purchased at www.faber.co.uk

About the Tutors

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize.

In 2004, her second novel The Electric Michelangelo was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was published in 2009 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her work has been translated into many languages. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a radio adaptation of her third novel.

Rachel Cusk was born in 1967. She has won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and her most recent novel, Arlington Park, was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her non-fiction book, A Life’s Work, was published to huge acclaim in 2001, and her account of a summer spent in Italy with her family, The Last Supper, was published in 2009. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young Novelists. She lives in Brighton.

About Faber

Faber and Faber is the last of the great independent publishing houses in London. We were established in 1929 by Geoffrey Faber and our first editor was T. S. Eliot. Among our list of authors we are proud to publish five Booker Prize winners and eleven Nobel Laureates. We are particularly well-known for our unrivalled list of modern poets and playwrights, as well as for publishing writers of prize-winning fiction and general non-fiction.

To make a booking:

Online Booking is via Eventbrite, a secure e-ticketing service.

Alternatively, contact Becky on either becky.fincham@faber.co.uk or telephone +44 (0) 20 7927 3908.

Or write to:

Becky Fincham
Faber and Faber Ltd
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

Places are strictly limited so book soon to avoid disappointment.