Writing Courses & Workshops Online & in London
Be inspired to write, and learn how to get published at the college where Andrea Levy, Malorie Blackman, Anna Burns, and other celebrated authors studied. Read our success stories to see what's possible for you as a writer.
Learn from published authors
Whether you're just starting out or ready to publish your first book, the benefits of our writing courses include expert tuition from a published author and feedback on your work as you develop your writing skills. There will also be opportunities to participate in group discussions and activities with fellow students.
Unheard Voices Scholarship
City Lit’s Malorie Blackman Scholarships for 'Unheard Voices' provide three annual awards to fund one year’s study within the Creative Writing department at City Lit. Learn more >
See what it's like be part a City Lit online creative writing course.
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- Drowned Worlds: climate fiction by JG Ballard and Jessie GreengrassCourse start date: Tue 15 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lewis WardFor this in-college literature session we will compare two depictions of climate disaster written fifty years apart, JG Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962) and Jessie Greengrass’ The High House (2021). We will explore how both novels depict the encroachment of water on human civilisation and the psychology of the survivors, but with very different styles, approaches and conclusions.Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £15.00 Concession £12.00 - The History of the Irish short story: from James Joyce to Claire KeeganCourse start date: Tue 29 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThe short story has come to be seen as one of Irish Literature’s most celebrated forms of expression. From the early stories of George Moore and James Joyce, to modern classics by John McGahern, William Trevor and Claire Keegan, the short story has allowed Irish writers to pick apart the complexities of Irish society in powerful, precise and poetic terms. This course will explore some of the most iconic short stories of twentieth-century Irish literature.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Masterworks of 19th Century French and Russian literatureCourse start date: Tue 29 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThis class explores classic texts of 19th century French and Russian literature, discussing literary style, themes, and contexts as a way of developing and sharing responses to celebrated European writing. Among the French writers examined will be Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert and Rimbaud, with our Russians including Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - First Novels Revisited: Amis, McEwan, Barnes, IshiguroCourse start date: Tue 29 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lewis WardMartin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro are household names of contemporary British fiction. But how did their careers begin in the 1970s and 1980s? And how do their early efforts stand up today?Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Brief Encounters: the art of short fictionCourse start date: Tue 29 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Megan BeechWhat does short fiction require of us as readers? How does the compressed space of a few pages change the way in which writers write and the kinds of stories they choose to tell? This online course explores a vast array of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century short fiction, thinking about the possibilities and limitations of this exciting and vivid form of literature.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - Tales from everywhere: international fictions from the 20th centuryCourse start date: Wed 30 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Aamer HusseinA selection of novels from 1960 to 1980, including Heinrich Boll's powerful psychological fiction, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum; two works of speculative fiction, Marlen Haushofer's The Wall and Kay Dick's They; Latifa Zayyat's bildungsroman, The Open Door; and Mariama Ba's powerful exploration of mourning, So Long a Letter.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £162.00 - Classics Remixed and RetoldCourse start date: Thu 1 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonCome and join us to explore two classic texts and two ‘companion novels’ that retell their famous stories from alternative perspectives: George Orwell, 1984 (1949) and Sandra Newman, Julia (2023); Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Jo Baker, Longbourn (2013).Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Get together and readCourse start date: Thu 1 May 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Claire AllenEnjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation. The group is led by a shared reading practitioner trained by The Reader Organisation.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £75.00 - The Open Road: classics of living on the roadCourse start date: Wed 7 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettIt was that great literary voyager Robert Louis Stevenson who said “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive”. Whether it's to the sound of train wheels, hoofbeats, car tyres or marching feet, and not knowing where day’s end will find you, there is an exhilaration in being on the open road. And the twentieth century saw a host of stirring accounts of journeys made in search of a special kind of freedom. Some of them have become literary classics.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - 21st Century Folk Tales: myth and magic in the global worldCourse start date: Thu 8 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Katie GossThis in-college course focuses on innovative short fiction from around the globe which reworks folkloric traditions to grapple with conditions of twenty-first century life. As well as engaging with the unique folkloric influences each text draws on, we’ll consider the complexities of the present that they are addressed to – and how the rising popularity of ghost stories, fairy tales, dark fables and surreal myths suggests a renewed fascination with the intrigues of the mysterious, monstrous and inexplicable.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Modern Short Crime Fiction: 1950 to present timesCourse start date: Tue 13 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: William BradyFrom Victorian ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ to the pages of mid-twentieth-century American Pulp Magazines, the history and evolution of the Crime genre has always been bound up with that of the short story. This course explores how this short-form legacy has been celebrated and sustained by Crime Writers from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present day. Short form narrative has proved an apt vehicle for emerging and established Crime Writers to experiment with the form—crafting suspenseful, mysterious and beguiling tales of the unexpected.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - London in WritingCourse start date: Tue 13 May 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonCome and explore London in writing! On this course we’ll study fiction and non-fiction texts about London. Contemporary perspectives on the city include two recent novels: Happiness by Aminatta Forna and Light Perpetual by Frances Spufford.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - Americans in Paris: Writers Writing in The City of LightCourse start date: Tue 13 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Alexander Fairbairn-DixonExplore how three pioneering American writers wrote about their lives in Paris. Taking three different forms of life-writing together, memoir, autobiography, and roman a clèf, we’ll consider how Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Djuna Barnes depict a particular place and time. How did they portray the sights, sounds, streets and salons of Paris? What was it like to be a writer, breaking new ground, in the City of Light?Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Apocalypse London: the city in dystopian fiction - 1880-1974Course start date: Fri 16 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sarah WiseExplore representations of London in works of dystopian/science fiction, written between the 1890s and the 1970s. Our authors will include HG Wells, John Wyndham, George Orwell and Nigel Kneale.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £169.00 Concession £110.00 - Fairytales RemadeCourse start date: Wed 21 May 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis online course introduces a selection of fairy tales from the First Golden Age of Children’s Literature, occurring in the latter half of the 19th century until the early 20th century. We will focus upon L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), George McDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863).
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00
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