CHASE Creative Writing Residency

The Residency

The Residency is a one-week program for creative writers from 18th to 25th May at the Great Barn Farm near Kings Lynn. The week will consist of daily student led workshops and writing classes on theory and practice with a masterclass on the 19th from Sarah Hall, who has published six novels, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The week will also include scheduled time for participants to further their own creative projects. It will conclude with a group discussion on teaching best practices and draft guidelines.

The Venue

Accommodation will be in luxury barns on a working 1350-acre farm. A link to the venue is here: http://www.greatbarnfarm.co.uk/. Bedlinen and towels will be provided (but guests should bring towels for the swimming pool if they wish to swim) Accommodation includes plenty of indoor shared social space, a private outdoor garden and seating area, a table tennis barn and a shared indoor swimming pool and steam room. The immediate area “is a very beautiful and quiet part of Norfolk with gently rolling farmland, ancient woodlands and wildlife filled fields and hedgerows.”

Rooms will typically be shared by two participants with one bathroom for each pair. Each participant should claim a refund for travel costs from their own CHASE allowance, through the CHASE representative for their respective institution.

What is expected from participants

Each participant will be required to give a one-and-a-half-hour class on a specific aspect of the theory and practice of creative writing or lead a two-hour workshop. (Please note that classes will be recorded for dissemination across the CHASE Network.) For each workshop, each participant will be required to read and comment on material submitted by other participants and to return a marked-up script to each workshop. Each participant will be workshopped once and will be expected to submit up to five thousand words of prose or script or a comparable portfolio of poetry for that purpose. Material must be circulated by no later than the 27th of April.

Each participant will be required to prepare one evening meal for the group and to help generally with cooking, keeping the house tidy and recording classes or workshops for dissemination by CHASE. Each participant will be required to prepare one blog post on a specified day or part of the residency to be published on the CHASE website.

More generally, as much as this is an opportunity for each participant to develop their own work, it is as importantly an opportunity to support others with work and build a CHASE community of writers for future support and accordingly, a collegiate spirit and an interest in learning and supporting are both critical.

The application process

This residency is open to applicants who are CHASE fellows on creative/critical or purely creative writing PhDs. It is open to prose writers, poets and script writers. One or two spaces will be made available to creative/critical or creative writing PhD students who are at CHASE institutions but are not CHASE funded (please make clear on your application if you fall within this category). Applicants should submit a five-hundred-word application with a brief personal statement, description of the creative project they plan to work on at the Residency and a statement of what their participation would add to the Residency. In addition, as half the applicants will be selected to give theory and practice classes, applicants should provide a class plan for the class they would give, should they be selected. The plan should include a two-hundred-word abstract and an outline with the amount of time to be spent on each activity. Very broad examples of class topics could include: dialogue, conflict, how to write about sex, how to write about race, positionality, structure. Finally, applicants should specify whether they require a single room and if so why. Please note that there is very limited single occupancy accommodation.

Ensuring diversity and a collegiate, supportive environment will be the primary criteria for selection.

Please contact Taymour at t.soomro@uea.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Deadline to apply is 18 March 2018.

Successful applicants will be notified by 1 April.