Helen Jukes: Creative Non-Fiction

In this online taster workshop you’ll be getting to grips with some of the core elements needed to write original and compelling creative nonfiction. Through a combination of group discussion and short writing tasks, you’ll look at what it means to take a creative approach to writing about real-world subjects, and learn some of the skills and techniques that others have brought to this exciting and diverse genre.

Exercises will be open and exploratory – you’ll experiment with voice and form, playing with contrast and scale to bring an original perspective to the subjects that interest you. Borrowing a technique from Maggie Nelson, we’ll be writing in concentric circles; we’ll willingly follow tangents as we experiment with research methods, and ask how to write characters that are as real on the page as the stories they inhabit. Working from an essay by Michael Malay, we’ll also consider how personal narratives can function within works of creative nonfiction – how we might write about landscapes even as we hone in on close-up, sensory details.

By the end of the session, you should have gained some new tools to help you approach your material in fresh and novel ways