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 >
- The Spanish Empire: Power, Conquest, and LegacyCourse start date: Tue 28 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Maisa EdwardsJoin Dr. Maisa Edwards to explore the rise, global reach and fall of the Spanish Empire from the 1400s to the 1800s.
Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - Exploring Film GenresCourse start date: Wed 29 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Jon WisbeyBoth commercial strategy and critical concept, genre provides critics and audiences with a way of distinguishing between types of films and narrative patterns, while affording filmmakers the opportunity to exploit successful formulas. Drawing on key theories of the concept, this course looks at a range of genres, and sub-genres, and the way in which they have evolved through cinema's history.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Philosophy reading group: Descartes's MeditationsCourse start date: Wed 29 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Karl WhiteDescartes’ Meditations is arguably the foundational text of modern Western philosophy influencing not only the what of philosophy, but the how and the why. Reading it together, we’ll discover the stone that created ripples still affecting our thinking today.
Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £51.00 - Greek philosophy: the Hellenistic periodCourse start date: Thu 30 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: John GoffThe pursuit of happiness is ongoing. In the ancient Greek world this gave rise to several ‘philosophies of life’ that remain the cornerstone of contemporary attitudes. Join this course to explore their key sources. - Fact and Fantasy: English Houses in FictionCourse start date: Thu 30 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Phyllis RichardsonWhy have so many British authors set stories in and around an important house? How does the structure, history and atmosphere of a great house affect plot and narrative? And where do authors derive their inspiration to build fictional houses that capture readers’ imaginations so fully? The novels on this course all focus on one finely imagined house and demonstrate the author’s own personal concerns of the time.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Art in theory: What is creativity?Course start date: Thu 30 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
This critical studies course for developing artists and makers explores the concept of creativity and what it means to be an artist, drawing on a range of cultural theories and work by creative practitioners to help inspire and enhance creative and critical thinking.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £139.00 - Spanish 2/3: Un viaje por la Patagonia argentinaCourse start date: Sat 1 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Analía ToloneDiscover the beauty of the outstanding of Argentinian Patagonia, the region defined by its dramatic landscapes, jagged peaks, pristine rivers and incredible wildlife. In this workshop we will explore the three main districts (The Lake District, Atlantic and Southern Patagonia) and their historic aspects. We will also touch in the Welsh culture heritage that can be found in small towns such as Trelew.
This will be an informative workshop done in Spanish. You should have an elementary level of the language
(at least an A2 leve, i.e at least Spanish 2 upper).Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £12.00 - Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £40.00
- Prostitution in Ancient RomeCourse start date: Tue 4 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sean GabbThe oldest profession as practised among the Romans - not for the squeamish.Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £12.00 - Social Media Engagement, Trends & AlgorithmsCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Amber Raney-KincadeEngagement is an important part of social media. By not engaging on the platform you reduce your visibility and raking with the algorithm. This class will show you how to engage and use trends on LinkedIn, Facebook, X (previously Twitter), Instagram and TikTok. When you engage with other posts on social media this helps to improve your performance on the algorithm. - ‘Stranger’ Things: Muriel Spark’s ShapeshiftingCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis course will introduce and discuss two novels by eminent author, Muriel Spark- Memento Mori (1959) and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960). Her writing wilfully upends notions of conformity and acts as a disrupter to accepted conventions. Instead, ‘Spark beckons us to encounter the stranger’ (Marilyn Reizbaum). Playfully disrupting passive readers and stretching comfort zones, Spark’s work provides a space to access unaccustomed outlooks that make us rethink our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. Instead of unconsciously going with the flow, she awakens us to life’s stranger things.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Image and identity: 20th century Chinese art and cinemaCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Meitao QuExplore the work of Chinese artists and filmmakers between the turn of the 20th century to the turn of the 21st as they try to make sense of a world caught on the cusp between the old and the new. What place did art and cinema have in socio-political movements, and how did visual culture reflect the hopes and anxieties of the time?Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - 20th to 21st Century War Poetry: British and InternationalCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldExplore the astonishing range of poetic responses to a hundred years of warfare, acts of witnessing, endurance, defiance and condemnation by writers across the globe: Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Britain, Brecht, Milosz, Celan, Akhmatova and Stepanova in Europe and Russia, Darwish and Zhadan in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many others. How do they describe the indescribable? High art or doggerel, what does it matter once the bombs start to fall?Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £103.00 Concession £84.00 - Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £19.00 Concession £12.00
- Italian 3: cinque settimane, un libroCourse start date: Fri 7 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Ottavia CastellinaImprove your knowledge of Italian through on this short literature course which will give you an opportunity to learn new vocabulary and practise your grammar by being exposed to authentic Italian texts. Each term learners will look at a new text and use it as a base to improve not only their reading skills but also their speaking, grammar and vocabulary.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00
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