NAWE Conference Programme 2022

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Conference Information Social Media

Renewal and Resilience is an online conference, delivered using Zoom.

Please ensure you follow NAWE on Twitter @ NaweWriters and the hashtag for the event is #NAWEConf22

If you have not used Zoom before we would recommend you register for a free account here and download the software onto your computer or device in preparation for the live element of the conference.

Hangout Lounge

During the NAWE conference we will be hosting a hangout lounge which will be available for delegates to network with colleagues during coffee and lunch breaks.

Please access this using the link and details provided in your confirmation email.

For the best experience we recommend participating on a computer or tablet rather than a smartphone. If you already have a Zoom account, please make sure you have downloaded the most recent update of the software.

Zoom have made end-to-end encryption of meetings available to create a highly secure meeting environment.

Each session at the NAWE Conference will be passcode protected and the waiting room feature will be applied to ensure the meeting is fully secure.

Support with IT issues Please test your Wi-Fi connection in advance. If you cannot hear the sound, please check that you have your speakers or headphone volume turned up and have selected the right output device on zoom (Click the arrow next to the mic and select the right speaker in select a speak option). If any issues persist, please contact our technical team on admin@nawe.co.uk or call 0330 3335 909.

All sessions will have closed captioning displayed and BSL will be provided on request (please email admin@nawe. co.uk).

Accessing the conference sessions

On booking for the NAWE conference, you will have been asked to select your preferred sessions. One week prior to the event, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link for each session booked. To join a session, go to the agenda in the email and click the relevant link.

If you have not received this information, would like to amend your chosen sessions or are having trouble accessing please email admin@nawe.co.uk or call 0330 3335 909.

All sessions will be recorded and available to view on the NAWE website until Friday 13 May 2021. Further information on how to access these will be provided following the conference.

On entering the session your microphone will be muted but we would encourage you to enable your camera.

Q&A

During each session you will be able to ask questions through the Q&A and chat function on Zoom, although most questions will not be answered until the end of each session. Please be aware speakers will do their best to answer all questions but depending on volume this may not be possible. Some speakers may also invite you to unmute and to ask your question in person.

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Welcome

to the NAWE Conference 2022 Dear Writers, Welcome to NAWE’s second virtual conference!

Our theme for this year is ‘Renewal & Resilience’. We’re excited to welcome writers who teach creative writing in all settings across the UK and internationally for three days of creativity, information exchange, and networking.

This year’s programme brings together some of the most exciting names in creative writing education today.

We’re delighted to welcome Hannah Lowe, a Costa Award-winning poet, and Professor Thomas Glave, associate editor of Wasafiri and the 2021 writer in residence at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing, as our guest evening speakers.

Our rich programme of conference submissions is supplemented by a spine of carefully curated events, panels, talks and workshops, designed to rejuvenate your practice and help us think as a sector about some of the biggest challenges facing creative writing educators today. We’re pleased to feature conversations about Making the Literature Sector Accessible, with Kim Moore and Hannah Hodgson, Knowing Your Rights with Nicola Solomon from the Society of Authors and Lesley Gannon from the Writers’ Guild, along with sessions on Getting into Magazine Publishing (with Jane Commane, Nine Arches Press, and Romalyn Ante, harana poetry), Funding for Writers (Jonathan Davidson). We hope there’s something for everyone.

We’ve opted to keep our conference entirely online in 2022, so that we can keep costs low, keep the conference accessible, and run a pilot bursary programme. We’re grateful to funding from Arts Council England’s Cultural Recovery Fund which has allowed us to do this. If income is a barrier to attending, please contact us at admin@nawe.co.uk. We have a limited number of free places available on a first come, first served basis.

At the time of writing, creative writing educators in all settings are facing unprecedented challenges. We know our strength lies in our network, and in our ability to share information, problem-solve, and offer resources to build both individual and collective resilience.

We hope to see you online at Renewal and Resilience, NAWE’s conference for 2022!

Seraphima Kennedy Director, NAWE Some comments from last year’s delegates: ‘Absolutely excellent. Fascinating, informative and friendly.’

‘Still full of ideas and inspiration several days later.’

‘This was my first NAWE conference. It was excellent - stimulating, thought-provoking, well-organised.’

‘An energising and uplifting experience on every level.’

‘So good to see familiar faces and to meet new people.’

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Special Guests Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-British, Wolverhampton-based author. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language, and founder of Tsaá with Roma, an online interview series with poets and other creatives. Her debut collection is Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus). She was recently awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2021/22.

Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and writer. Remembered, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020). Winner of a Northern Writers Award in fiction (2017), Yvonne was commended for children’s writing in the Faber Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize (2017) and has six titles in Penguin Random House’s The Ladybird Tales of Superheroes and The Ladybird Tales of Crowns and Thrones. Yvonne teaches creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University where she is a Principal Lecturer and Humanities Business and Enterprise Lead.

Sharmilla Beezmohun has worked in publishing since 1994. She was Deputy Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing. In 2010 She co-founded Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions with Sarah Sanders. Sharmilla is a Trustee of Carcanet Publishers, Modern Poetry in Translation magazine and the George Padmore Institute, an archive housing unique collections of material from pioneering Black British political and cultural organisations of the last seventy years. She is also on the International Organising Committee of AfroEurope@s, a cross-continent academic and cultural network.

In 2019 Sharmilla became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Jane Commane is director/editor at Nine Arches Press, co-editor of Under the Radar magazine and co-author (with Jo Bell) of How to Be a Poet. Her debut poetry collection, Assembly Lines (Bloodaxe, 2018) was longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Her poetry has featured in Staying Human (Bloodaxe) as well as in The Guardian, Butcher’s Dog and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. She is a Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 writer, and in 2017 was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.

Jonathan Davidson has worked in arts and cultural management for thirty years including on many (mostly) successful small-scale funding applications. He is Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands and runs his own arts management company, Midland Creative Projects. He is was also the Chair of NAWE until 2021.

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Special Guests Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and chair of writer development organization Spread The Word. A poem from his debut collection Ticker-tape was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2018, and his second collection, Saffron Jack, was published in the UK by Nine Arches Press in 2020. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair).

Lesley Gannon is Deputy General Secretary of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB). Lesley plays a key role in the negotiation and implementation of WGGB national agreements in TV, theatre, radio and film. She leads on WGGB research and policy and oversees other core areas of the union’s work. She represents WGGB in the UK and abroad, and deputises for the General Secretary.

Thomas Glave is the author of four books and the editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Duke, 2008). An associate editor of Wasafiri, he is the 2021 writer in residence at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing, a University of Liverpool Honorary Professor, and a trustee of Writing West Midlands (UK). A member of the Transition editorial board, his work has recently appeared in The White Review and is forthcoming in Small Axe. He is a professor of creative writing and Caribbean studies at SUNY-Binghamton and a 2021–22 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nottingham.

Hannah Hodgson is a poet living with life limiting illness. Her work has been published

by BBC Arts, The Poetry Society and Magma, amongst other outlets. She is a 2021 winner of the Poetry Business New Poets Prize and a 2020 Northern Writers Award for Poetry. She also received a prestigious Diana Legacy Award (given in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales) in 2021. Hannah has published two pamphlets, Dear Body (Wayleave Press, 2018) and Where I’d Watch Plastic Trees Not Grow (Verve, 2021). Her first full collection, 163 Days, will be published by Seren on the 28th March 2022. @HodgsonWrites, hannahhodgson. com and YouTube.com/HannahHodgson Sarah Howe is a Hong Kong-born poet and academic. Her first book, LOOP OF JADE (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize. She teaches poetry at King’s College London. Alongside her research interests in contemporary British and American poetry, she is a scholar of sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature. Her publications on Renaissance writing and art revolve around interdisciplinary approaches to word and image, rhetoric and poetics, and literature and the visual imagination. Previous honours include a Hawthorden Fellowship and the Harper-Wood Studentship for English Poetry, as well as fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

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Special Guests Hannah Lowe is a poet, memoirist and critic. She was named a Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poet in 2014 and won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2020. Her first poetry collection, Chick (20130, won the Michael Murphy Poetry Prize. Her latest, The Kids, a PBS Choice for Autumn 2021, was shortlisted for the 2022 TS Eliot Prize.

She is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University. www.hannahlowe.me

Aoife Mannix is an award-winning poet who has published four collections of poetry, four libretti and a novel. Her pamphlet ‘Alice Under The Knife’ won the James Tate Poetry Prize in 2020. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live amongst others. She has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling (Seren 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married was published by Seren in 2021. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me will be published by Smith/Doorstop in March 2022.

Nina Mingya Powles: a writer, editor and publisher from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of three poetry collections, including Magnolia,木蘭, which was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje Prize and the Forward Prize; and Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai. In 2019 she won the Nan Shepherd Prize for Small Bodies of Water, and in 2018 she won the Women Poets’ Prize. She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon. Nina was born in Aotearoa, partly grew up in China, and now lives in London.

Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright, teacher and activist. Her second collection, All My Mad Mothers was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot prize and was followed by Dad, Remember You are Dead in 2019, both from Nine Arches Press. A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems after Artemisia (2020) are both published

by Hercules Editions. Her most recent collection is One Hundred Lockdown sonnets (Nine Arches Press 2021). She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches for The Poetry School.

Kate Simpson is an editor, author, poet, and journalist based in York, UK, working broadly across visual arts, literature, culture, and the environment. In 2021, she edited Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency (Valley Press), which was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, and a Guardian / Observer Book of the Year, lauded as 2021’s ‘best ecothemed anthology’. Kate has written for the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry School, and The London Magazine, amongst others. She is also Associate Editor at Aesthetica Magazine.

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Special Guests Nicola Solomon is Chief Executive of the Society of Authors, the UK’s largest trade union for writers of all genres, illustrators, scriptwriters and literary translators. Nicola’s role encompasses protecting authors’ interests in negotiations/disputes with publishers and agents, advising individual authors and campaigning for authors’ rights, as well as for the wider cultural environment. Nicola is an expert in the publishing industry and the associated law, from copyright and defamation, to privacy, data protection and contract.

She is a lawyer and Deputy District Judge and sits on the board of the Creators Rights Alliance, the International Authors’ Forum and the British Copyright Council.

Lucy Sweetman is a Reader in Teaching and Learning and Course Leader of the BA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her research interests include teaching and learning in higher education, the use of memoir in creative inquiry, and creative writing in response to public affairs. She is the co-editor of Exploring Consensual Leadership in Higher Education: Co-operation, Collaboration and Partnership (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Dr Nathalie Teitler Hon FRSL has worked as a literary activist, promoting inclusivity in British literature for over 20 years. She is the Director of the Complete Works Poetry, an initiative founded by Bernardine Evaristo, that has had a significant impact on the landscape of British poetry. Nathalie was born in Buenos Aires and has a PhD in Latin America poetry She is also the founding Director, along with Co-Director Leo Boix, of Nuevo Sol British LatinX writers, the first organisation to nurture and develop British Latinx writers as well as building bridges with Latinx/ Lat Am writers around the world.

James Thornton The New Statesman named James Thornton as one of 10 people who could change the world. Irish-American, James is also the author of Client Earth (Scribe 2018), co-authored with his husband Martin Goodman, which received the Judges’ Selection, Business Book of the Year Award 2018, and the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature from Santa Monica Public Library. He has twice won Leader of the Year at the Business Green Awards. James is a Zen Buddhist priest, and founder and president of ClientEarth, the leading global not-for-profit law group.

Jennifer Wong was born and grew up in Hong Kong and now in the UK, Jennifer is the author of three collections including 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) which was chosen as the PBS Wild Card Choice 2020, Goldfish (Chameleon Press) and a pamphlet Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry). She studied in Oxford and has a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. She has taught creative writing at Oxford Brookes, Poetry School, City Lit and Kubrick Poetry.

Jinhao Xie was born in Chengdu, China. Xie is interested in nature, the mundane, the interpersonal. They are a current member of Southbank Centre New Poets Collective and Barbican Young Poets. Their work is in POETRY, Poetry Review, Gutter Magazine, Harana, Bath Magg, and anthologies, including Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This edited

by Nikita Gill and Instagram Poems for Every Day by National Poetry Library, and Re. Creation (a forthcoming queer anthology). They are the inaugural champion of Asia House Poetry slam 2018. They were invited to speak at various organisations including Imperial College London, University of Kent and Stanza Poetry Festival.

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Special Guests UK Arts Councils: Alan Bett is Head of Literature and Publishing at Creative Scotland. Alan works with a team of three Literature Officers and together they manage funding relationships with major literary organisations in Scotland, support writers and publishers to apply through funding channels and design and deliver strategic projects looking to develop and support Scotland’s literary sector. This includes diversifying the voices connecting with literature in Scotland, as readers and writers, and promoting Scottish writers and writing internationally. With a background in professional publishing, Alan has award-winning experience in arts journalism, alongside editing and criticism, covering the Scottish arts sector and interviewing authors and artists from around the globe for a Scottish readership.

Sarah Crown is Director of Literature at Arts Council England. She was previously the editor of mumsnet.com, the UK’s largest network for parents and before that was the Guardian’s online literary editor. She also reviews poetry and fiction for the Guardian, the Literary Review and the TLS.

Lleucu Siencyn is CEO of Literature Wales, the national company responsible for the development and promotion of literature funded by the Arts Council of Wales. Under her leadership the organisation has developed a significant programme of wider engagement in literature, writer development, and international representation. These include a focus on emerging writers and tackling under-representation, and developing partnerships with organisations in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and across the UK to celebrate our literary cultures in all our languages. Prior to this, she was Literature Officer at the Arts Council of Wales and went on to become Deputy CEO of Academi.

Paul McVeigh - Arts Council Northern Ireland. Paul’s debut novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award. His short stories have been in numerous anthologies, as well as, on BBC Radio 3, 4 & 5, and Sky Arts. He edited theQueer Love anthology and The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices.

Paul co-founded the London Short Story Festival as is associate director of Word Factory ‘the UK’s national organisation for excellence in the short story’ The Guardian.

He’s programmed numerous festivals including Jaipur Literature Festival Belfast and is currently acting Head of Literature for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

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Special Events on Thursday BREAKFAST POEMS

THURSDAY, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY 8.15 – 8.45

MAKING LITERATURE EVENTS ACCESSIBLE

https://soundcloud.com/nawewriters

Kim Moore, Hannah Hodgson

Tune into Soundcloud for some poetry with your snap, crackle and pop!

The link is accessible throughout the conference.

12.20 – 13.10 Writers and literary organisations have adapted at astonishing speeds to meet challenges and changes brought about by the global pandemic. The move to online events meant that for some people, live literature was accessible. How can we build on this adaptability and innovation to ensure that accessibility is not forgotten in the move back to in-person events? What strategies do we have as audience members, as artists and as organisers to make meaningful change? How can we learn to respond to feedback with openness and integrity instead of defensiveness? NAWE’s Director Seraphima Kennedy will be in conversation with Hannah Hodgson, a Disabled poet, editor and activist, and Dr Kim Moore, co-director of Kendal Poetry Festival and freelance writer and performer.

RESILIENCE:

A WELCOME FROM NAWE 10.00 - 10.15

What do we mean by resilience?

Join Seraphima Kennedy, Director of NAWE, and Andrew Melrose, Chair of NAWE, for a short welcome before getting into the swing of NAWE 2022.

POETICS OF HOME: APPRECIATING DIVERSE DIASPORIC VOICES

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Sarah Howe, Nina Mingya Powles, Jenny Wong, Jinhao Xie

Nicola Solomon (Society of Authors), Lesley Gannon (Writers’ Guild of Great Britain), NAWE

10.20 - 11.15

14.10 – 15.00

In this poetry reading event and discussion, poets from the virtual Poetics of Home Chinese Diaspora Poetry festival (supported by Arts Council England), bring to the audience poems that respond to the themes of migration, family history and desire. Poets include Sarah Howe, Nina Mingya Powles, Jinhao Xie from the UK and Eddie Tay from Hong Kong. Participant poets will also share the findings and learning experience from organising the festival. A series of thematic online poetry readings and discussions, the project showcases Anglophone Chinese diasporic poetry and poetry communities, at a time when the pandemic still make international travel (especially between China and the UK) difficult. We will explore how we created conversations on writing within digital space, and how online reading events—supported by social media channels—help creative writers engage with new international audiences.

Making a living as a writer in education has always been hard, but for many it sometimes feels impossible. Those teaching creative writing in higher education report facing a ‘hot mess’ of precarious contracts, low rates of hourly pay, constant marking & departmental meetings, as well as cuts to government funding and redundancies which make institutions feel like precarious places to work. For freelance writers in community settings, the move to teaching online has also thrown new worries into the mix: who owns the copyright for pre-recorded online teaching sessions? Who owns the content? What are your rights around contracts, copyright, payment and employment? What kind of contract is acceptable for the ways in which we are writing and teaching in 2022? Join Nicola Solomon (Society of Authors) in conversation with NAWE, for a wide-ranging discussion on your rights and how to handle them.

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Special Events on Friday FUNDING FOR WRITERS

FUNDRAISING 1-2-1s

9:00 – 9:50 Jonathan Davidson (Writing West Midlands)

FRIDAY & SATURDAY Jonathan Davidson (Writing West Midlands)

Come along with a project idea that you would like to discuss. Think about who might benefit from this project (as artists, participants or audiences) and who might be a partner in this project that would be helpful. We will focus on Arts Council England funding, but the principles are similar for most funding streams.

Come along with a project idea that you would like to discuss. Think about who might benefit from this project (as artists, participants or audiences) and who might be a partner in this project that would be helpful. We will focus on Arts Council England funding, but the principles are similar for most funding streams. Booking essential via Eventbrite.

UK ARTS COUNCILS: LITERATURE PANEL with SARAH CROWN (ACE), PAUL MCVEIGH (ACNI), LLEUCU SIENCYN (LITERATURE WALES), and ALAN BETT (CREATIVE SCOTLAND)

11.00 - 11.50 Following last year’s unique event – a special cultural funding panel comprising the literature leads from the four nations England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales - NAWE again convenes a rare gathering to discuss the state of the sector. Join us to find out how the sector is adapting to the pandemic and the future priorities for national literature development within and between the four nations.

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Special Events on Friday WHOSE PLAYING FIELD? CREATING AN INCLUSIVE LITERATURE SECTOR FOR ALL WRITERS Sharmilla Beezmohun, Nathalie Teitler, Rishi Dastidar 14.00 – 14.50

Less than 2% of all authors and illustrators published in the last 11 years are British people of colour (BookTrust 2019). Only 1% of UK University professors are black (BBC 2021). Initiatives come and go, political will changes, the spotlight moves on – but many writers who teach, write and publish do so alongside structural forms of racism that are a constant, unwelcome companion. As part of the NAWE conference on Renewal & Resilience, we’re asking what organisations can do to remove barriers and improve access? How can the literature sector can work for change, work against racism, and work to create a level playing field for all writers regardless of background? Sharmilla Beezmohun (Speaking Volumes), Nathalie Teitler (The Complete Works) and Rishi Dastidar will ask what actions can be taken by literature organisations to level the playing field and create an inclusive literary culture that works for all writers.

THOMAS GLAVE in conversation with Jonathan Davidson 19.30 – 20.30

Our first evening reading features a reading and inconversation with Thomas Glave, professor of creative writing and Caribbean studies at SUNY-Binghamton (New York) and a 2021–22 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nottingham. Thomas Glave is the author of four books and the editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Duke, 2008).

An associate editor of Wasafiri, he is the 2021 writer in residence at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing, a University of Liverpool Honorary Professor, and a trustee of Writing West Midlands (UK). A member of the Transition editorial board, his work has recently appeared in The White Review and is forthcoming in Small Axe. Thomas will be in conversation with Jonathan Davidson, CEO of Writing West Midlands.

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Special Events on Saturday MAXLITERACY 2021: WRITING WITH RESILIENCE THROUGH THE VISUAL ARTS 11.00 – 11.50 This panel conversation and discussion from the 2021 MaxLiteracy Awards programme reflects on the conference theme of creative writing and resilience.

Learning from the MaxLiteracy Awards 2021 projects, panelists share insights and experiences from galleries and museums and creative writers that have worked collaboratively with learning settings, from hospital schools to those in tertiary education. Adapting and working in innovative and resilient ways under challenging circumstances during the global health emergency, the panel will also reflect on how this learning impacted on the development of those projects, resources and legacy outcomes.

The MaxLiteracy Awards

The inaugural Max Reinhardt Literacy Awards were initiated and funded by the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust in 2014. With the support of the National Association of Gallery Education (Engage) and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), the awards have developed into a biennial programme enabling galleries, art museums and visual arts venues in England to support dedicated creative writing and literacy work with schools through art.

The 2021 MaxLiteracy Award recipients were: Newark Museum, Open Eye Gallery and The Turnpike.

Panelists include: Veronica Reinhardt, Trustee, (Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust), Jane Sillis, (Director, National Association of Gallery Education - Engage), Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde (MaxLiteracy Programme Coordinator and panel chair) and representatives from the 2021 host venue project teams: Hannah Gaunt (The Turnpike), Pauline Rowe, Creative Writer (Open Eye Gallery)

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Special Events on Saturday GETTING STARTED IN MAGAZINE PUBLISHING

HANNAH LOWE in conversation with Lucy Sweetman

Jane Commane (Nine Arches), Romalyn Ante (harana poetry, Ambit)

19.30 - 20.30

11.00 – 11.50 Writers want to publish. Editors want to find new voices.

But for the new and emerging writer, the world of publishing can seem impenetrable. How do you get your work out there? How can you tell which publications will be right for you? What are the different requirements of magazine editors and book editors? What function do magazines and journals occupy in shaping culture - can they push the boundaries of form, content, voice? And what do you do if you look around and think, ‘there’s no one doing this’? Join Jane Commane (Under the Radar, Nine Arches Press) and Romalyn Ante (co-founder of harana poetry) for a discussion around how to get started publishing in magazines – and how to set up your own title if the work you want to read just isn’t out there.

Our second evening event features a reading and inconversation with poet, memoirist and critic Hannah Lowe. Hannah was named a Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poet in 2014 and won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2020. Her first poetry collection, Chick (20130, won the Michael Murphy Poetry Prize. Her latest, The Kids, a PBS Choice for Autumn 2021, was shortlisted for the 2022 TS Eliot Prize. She is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University.

Hannah will be in conversation with Lucy Sweetman, Reader in Teaching and Learning, Bath Spa University.

Art in a Climate Emergency Jacqueline Saphra, James Thornton, Kate Simpson 14.00 – 14.50 What is the role of the artist in the face of catastrophic climate change? What can writers do to help hold governments to account? What tools and strategies can organisations employ to raise awareness and change attitudes - and is that enough? Join writers and organisations fighting to save the planet and build a sustainable future.

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Professional Development, Networking and Fellowship Events UP CLOSE EDITING AGENCY: ONE-TO-ONE MENTORING

Dr Shelagh Weeks, Susmita Bhattacharya, Caroline Oakley A chance to work with the editors of a professional agency,receiving supportive feedback on submitted work: the emphasis is on creative renewal, building resilience, and incorporating the creative and restorative into daily life. The editors will, via Zoom or phone, enter into a constructive and collaborative one-to-one discussion of your current, or perhaps abandoned, literary project: the novel (including synopsis), short stories, creative nonfiction.

Editors will work with 4 writers (time slots arranged closer to conference date).

Places will be filled on a first-come, first served basis. Once slots are allocated, writers will be given a submission date to send 2,500 words.

LATE NIGHT WRITES Thursday 21.00 – 22.00

Aoife Mannix

More night owl than early bird? Need to write when the house is quiet? Join us for a late night writing session hosted by one of NAWE’s fabulous writer members.

PhD & HE NETWORK MEETING Friay 9:00 – 9:50

Join us at this open session for creative writing academics, PhD students and anyone involved in creative writing practice, teaching and research in universities. Prof Andrew Melrose from NAWE’s PhD Network and Higher Education Committees will discuss developments over the past year, but also how to get the best out of the conference, the connections you make and your NAWE including editing, peer reviewing and writing for Writing in Practice.

APROPOS PROSE AND POETRY OPEN MIC Friday 21.00 – 22.00

In this 60-minute online session, writers will read/ perform their stories, extracts, poetry, creative nonfiction (memoir, personal essay), scripts, monologues, or hybrids to an engaged audience of listeners, readers, and other practitioners who just really want to hear it. You’ll have 3-5 minutes to read/perform.

To sign up for an open-mic slot, please email Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton at y.battle-felton@shu.ac.uk.

All are welcome. The piece can be in any form (workin-progress draft, published, not-published), as long as you’ve written it.

Aoife Mannix is an award-winning poet who has published four collections of poetry, four libretti and a novel. Her pamphlet ‘Alice Under The Knife’ won the James Tate Poetry Prize in 2020. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live amongst others. She has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.

NAWE COMMUNITY WRITER’S NETWORK: Practicing Inclusively on Zoom

NIGHT TIME POEMS

NAWE’s Community Writers’ Network was convened to support writers and facilitators working in community settings. Come along and network with peers and colleagues and find out how to get involved.

Thursday 22.00 – 22.30

Saturday 12.00 - 12.50

Tune in as you wind down for some poetry as you drift off to sleep.

LATE NIGHT TALES Saturday 22.00 – 22.30

Tune in for some short tales before drifting off to sleep

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NAWE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: RENEWAL & RESILIENCE Time

Room 1

Room 2

Room 3

Room 4

Room 5

THURSDAY 10TH 8.15 - 8.45

Breakfast Poems (SOUNDCLOUD)

9.00 - 9.50

PhD network: Embracing Creativity in the Creative Writing Thesis Rachel Carney, Andrew Melrose, Nikolai Duffy, Kim Moore

10.00 - 10.15

Welcome Session Renewal & Resilience: A welcome from NAWE

10.20 - 11.15

Poetics of Home Sarah Howe, Nina Mingya Powles, Jenny Wong, Jinhao Xie

11.15 - 11.45

The Next Chapter Heather Richardson, Ed Hogan

The Understory Charlotte Gann, Sarah Barnsley

Megaphone Community Leila Rasheed

Making Literature Events Accessible Hannah Hodgson, Kim Moore

13.10 - 14.10 14.10 - 15.00

Writing is Being at Home Cindy Shearer

BREAK

11.45 - 12.15

12:20 - 13.10

Poetry in Motion Anne Taylor

LUNCH BREAK Know your Rights Nicola Solomon (Society of Authors), Lesley Gannon (Writers' Guild of Great Britain)

15.05 - 15.35

Do-It-Yourself Digital Writing Amy Spencer

15.40 - 16.10 16.10 - 17.00

18.00 – 19.00

Autism: A Full-Body State of Getting Work through Being Commissioning Frances George Emma Boniwell (Writing West Midlands)

BREAK Multimodal Writing: on Digital Storytelling resilience, cross-pollination, Alison Mott, Antonia Luguori and playful opportunity Josie Barnard, Jo Dixon, Simon Perrill DINNER BREAK

Renga for Resilience Mel Parks

21.00 – 22.00 Late Night Writes 22.00 – 22.30 Night Time Poems (SOUNDCLOUD)

Conference Programme 16

NAWE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: RENEWAL & RESILIENCE Time

Room 1

Room 2

Room 3

Room 4

Room 5

FRIDAY 11TH 8.15 - 8.45

Breakfast Poems (SOUNDCLOUD)

9.00 - 9.50

Writing in Practice Hear Yourself Think Derek Neale, Anne Caldwell, Judy Waite Joanne Reardon, Heather Richardson, Edward Hogan

Funding for Writers Jonathan Davidson

10.00 - 10.30

‘I’m Working on Things that Facing Our Fears take Too Long’ Alice Penfold Eluned Grammich

Eating Sardines to Feed the Struggle Ravinder Basra

10.30 - 11.00 11.00 – 11.50

BREAK UK ARTS COUNCILS LITERATURE PANEL Sarah Crown (ACE), Paul McVeigh (ACNI), Lleucu Siencyn (Literature Wales), Alan Bett (Creative Scotland)

12:00 - 12.50

Accentuating the Positives (First Story) Pippa Hennessy

13.00 - 14.00 14.00 – 14.50

Speculative Nature Writing Tastes of Ancestral Wisdom Andrea Holland, Jos Smith Anike Bello LUNCH BREAK

Whose Playing Field?

Creating an Inclusive Literary Culture that Works for all Writers Sharmilla Beezmohun (Speaking Volumes) Nathalie Teitler, Rishi Dastidar

15.00 - 15.30

The rise of Creative Writing Studies in China Weidong Liu

15.30 - 16.00

Playing with Virtual Place and Space Helen Chaloner (Literature Works)

Writing Ourselves, Writing Other Muli Amaye

BREAK

16.00 - 16.50

‘Enough Love for all my Future’ Deirdre Daly The Tutor-Peer Elena Traina

16.50 – 19.30

Scan Rave: A Transatlantic, The Pilgrim-Writer Collaborative Approach to Victoria Field Scanning Poems Jocelyn Page, Cath Drake, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Maya Ribault, Sunni Brown Wilkinson

DINNER BREAK

19.30 – 20.30

THOMAS GLAVE interviewed by Jonathan Davidson

21.00 – 22.00

Open Mic

Conference Programme 17

NAWE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: RENEWAL & RESILIENCE Time

Room 1

Room 2

Room 3

Room 4

Room 5

SATURDAY 12TH 8.15 - 8.45

Breakfast Poems (SOUNDCLOUD)

9.00 - 9.50

How is a Short Story like a Panic Attack?

Melanie Jones

‘All Will Be Well’ Nicola Hill, Morgaine Merch Leaud, Joanne Reardon, Melissa Bailey

Connecting Voices Fiona Linday, Amina Alyal, Susanne Roland, Shelley Tracey, Judi Sissons

10.00 - 10.30

Developing an Accessible, Adaptable Approach to Creative Writing in AP setting Laurence Kidd

Europe calling from the Other Side of the Moon Lorena Briedis

Confidence Tricks Claire Collison

10.30 - 11.00

BREAK

11.00 – 11.50 Getting Started in Magazine Publishing Jane Commane, Romalyn Ante 12:00 – 12.50

MaxLiteracy 2021: Writing with Resilience through the Visual Arts Resilience and Renewal in the Creative Writing classroom Francis Gilbert

'I didn't say that' Amina Alyal, Oz Hardwick

13.00 - 14.00

NAWE Community Writers' Network: Practising inclusively on Zoom Jane Moss, Caleb Parkin, Liz Cashdan

LUNCH BREAK

14.00 – 14.50 Art in a Climate Emergency Jacqueline Saphra, James Thornton, Kate Simpson 15.00 - 15.30

Hold the Line Aly Stoneman

15.30 - 16.00

Flexibility, Confidence, Sociability Laurie Garrison

Writing as Other Megan Constable

How to Write as a Community Sabrin Hasbun

Developing Resilient Voices Amanda Epe

BREAK

16.00 - 16.50

Rooms of Whose Own? Sonja Frenzel Adversity & Adaptation Kate Potts DINNER BREAK

16.50 – 19.30

Write Well Claire Maguire

19.30 – 20.30 HANNAH LOWE interviewed by Lucy Sweetman 22.00 – 22.30 Late Night Tales (SOUNDCLOUD) Various Times:

Restorative Revisions one-to-one creative writing mentoring Funding for writers - from 9.30am on the Friday

One to one creative mentoring One to one funding advice sessions

Shelagh Weeks Jonathan Davidson

Conference Programme 18

Thursday 8.15 – 8.45

BREAKFAST POEMS

Tune into Soundcloud for some poetry with your snap, crackle and pop!

9.00 – 9.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: PhD & HE Network Meeting Join us at this open session for creative writing academics, PhD students and anyone involved in creative writing practice, teaching and research in universities.

Embracing Creativity in the Creative Writing Thesis Rachel Carney, Andrew Melrose, Nikolai Duffy, Kim Moore The creative writing thesis often includes two distinct sections: a creative work, such as a novel, with an accompanying critical component. This panel discussion will begin with a reflection on how the creative and critical elements of a thesis might be effectively combined in a hybrid form, so that critical becomes creative and creative becomes critical. There will be an opportunity to discuss a few examples, followed by breakout room discussions for PhD students and academics to discuss how such ideas might apply to their own research.

Room 4: Poetry in Motion: Harnessing Movement, Awareness and Expressive Writing for Creativity and Resilience Anne Taylor Using a combination of mindful (chair-based) movement and letter-writing prompts, this workshop will encourage participants to move out of their heads and into their bodies and to find the stories, poetry and metaphors that are held within. It will provide an introduction to the technique I have developed to promote reflective and creative writing as a means of self-care and resilience and which I have been using with doctors and other health care staff and those with mental health challenges since the start of the pandemic.

Room 5: Writing is Being at Home Cindy Shearer It might seem odd to say that our capacity to write resides in our connection to home, when, as a result of COVID, many of us can’t wait to get out more and away from home But in this presentation/workshop, I’d like to introduce participants to what a sense of home can be and how the capacity to draw on it can make us more resilient writers.

A room of one’s own is often important, but to make our most realized work, I believe we need to feel at home. I’ll invite participants to complete a short writing/drawing exercise. I would be happy to present, be part of a panel, or offer a workshop.

19

Thursday 10.00 – 10.15

Room 1:

Welcome Session

Renewal & Resilience: A Welcome from NAWE

What do we mean by resilience? Join Seraphima Kennedy, Director of NAWE, and Andrew

Melrose, Chair of NAWE, for a short welcome before getting into the swing of NAWE 2022.

10.20 – 11.15 Room 1:

Poetics of Home: Appreciating Diverse Diasporic Voices / Multicultural Poets Sarah Howe, Nina Mingya Powles, Jenny Wong, Jinhao Xie In this poetry reading event and discussion, we propose to invite poets from the virtual Poetics of Home Chinese Diaspora Poetry festival (22 September to 6 October 2021), supported by the Arts Council, bringing to the audience poems that respond to the themes of migration, family history and desire. Poets include Sarah Howe, Nina Mingya Powles, and Jinhao Xie. Participant poets will also share the findings and learning experience from organising the festival. A series of thematic online poetry readings and discussions, the project showcases Anglophone Chinese diasporic poetry and poetry communities, at a time when the pandemic still make international travel (especially between China and the UK) difficult. We will explore how we created conversations on writing within digital space, and how online reading events—supported by social media channels—help creative writers engage with new international audiences.

11.15 - 11.45

BREAK

If you need any support during the conference, please contact our technical team on admin@nawe.co.uk or call 0330 3335 909 20

Thursday 11.45 – 12.15

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: The Next Chapter Heather Richardson, Ed Hogan Why do students decide to pursue an MA in Creative Writing? How many have serious ambitions to be published?

What else do they hope to gain as writers, or in other aspects of their professional lives? And how do we, as course designers, strike a balance between student needs, employability agendas, and the academic rigour of our subject?

In this session we share the findings of a scholarship project that surveyed nearly 500 students on The Open University’s MA in Creative Writing to better understand their ambitions, both writerly and otherwise.

Room 4: The Understory Charlotte Gann, Sarah Barnsley This presentation introduces ‘The Understory Conversation’, a hub for creatives keen to engage with others who want to challenge and change the way we talk together. Central is a mutual intent to converse around a theme: ‘the Understory’. Often hidden, invisible, or obscured, ‘Understories’ relate to the parts of our lives that impact us but that society – and inequalities within it – too frequently silences. Exploring new ways of building resilience, balance and inclusivity, we share how the hub facilitates talk about our real experience of being alive – and how and why our creative practice fits and helps with this. (https://theunderstoryconversation.com/)

Room 5: Megaphone Community Leila Rasheed The Megaphone Writer Development Scheme supports people of colour who write for children. In addition to the core mentoring scheme, in 2021 we ran a pilot project called Community which offered free, online support to 50 emerging writers who wanted to learn how to create children’s literature and reach an audience. Community was intended as a sustainable community of practice to increase the resilience of marginalised writers and address racebased inequality in children’s literature. This 30 minute presentation will share the learning from this pilot project, which is funded by Arts Council England and Usborne Publishing.

12.20 – 13.10

Room 1:

Making Literature Events Accessible

Hannah Hodgson, Kim Moore Writers and literary organisations have adapted at astonishing speeds to meet challenges and changes brought about by the global pandemic. The move to online events meant that for some people, live literature was accessible. How can we build on this adaptability and innovation to ensure that accessibility is not forgotten in the move back to in-person events? What strategies do we have as audience members, as artists and as organisers to make meaningful change? How can we learn to respond to feedback with openness and integrity instead of defensiveness? NAWE’s Director Seraphima Kennedy will be in conversation with Hannah Hodgson, a Disabled poet, editor and activist, and Dr Kim Moore, co-director of Kendal Poetry Festival and freelance writer and performer.

13.10 - 14.10

LUNCH BREAK

21

Thursday 14.10 – 15.00

Room 1:

Know your Rights Nicola Solomon (Society of Authors),

Lesley Gannon (Writers’ Guild of Great Britain) Making a living as a writer in education has always been hard, but for many it sometimes feels impossible. Those teaching creative writing in higher education report facing a ‘hot mess’ of precarious contracts, low rates of hourly pay, constant marking & departmental meetings, as well as cuts to government funding and redundancies which make institutions feel like precarious places to work. For freelance writers in community settings, the move to teaching online has also thrown new worries into the mix: who owns the copyright for prerecorded online teaching sessions? Who owns the content? What are your rights around contracts, copyright, payment and employment? What kind of contract is acceptable for the ways in which we are writing and teaching in 2022? Join Nicola Solomon (Society of Authors) in conversation with NAWE, for a wide-ranging discussion on your rights and how to handle them.

15.05 – 15.35

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Do-It-Yourself Digital Writing Amy Spencer This presentation outlines a recent pilot research project that explored how to address financial and skills-based barriers faced by creative writers, specifically young people, when producing works of digital writing through researching and developing a low-tech, skill sharing approach to digital literary production that draws on aspects of DIY cultural production. The project engaged creative writing undergraduate and postgraduate students at Bath Spa University in undertaking research through experimenting with a series of case studies and sharing tools and ideas. This presentation will explore several case studies as well as this approach to research that is built on curiosity, creativity and skill-sharing.

Room 4: Autism: A Full-Body State of Being Frances George Autistic culture, language and voices are emerging from a long history of trauma and suppression. Autism is a fullbody state of being. As an autistic tutor, I use embodied writing practice to support autistic students to write from a place of safety, self-knowledge, and power. Through this practice, I am also developing my resilience as a disabled teacher and writer. Drawing on my records and student interviews, I will describe our entwined, fumbling, evolving practices. I will describe some tools and modes of engagement for supporting accessible, embodied teaching and writing in the autistic community and beyond.

Room 5: Getting Work through Commissioning Emma Boniwell (Writing West Midlands) Have you considered collaborations with reading groups or school groups? This session will get into the nittygritty of how this can work successfully to the advantage of the writer and the benefit to those involved in commissioning. Tried and tested approaches include working with Library-based and independent reading groups as well as groups of young people who are reluctant readers, or greater depth pupils in need of a challenge.

15.40 - 16.10

BREAK

22

Thursday 16.10 – 17.00

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Multimodal Writing: on resilience, cross-pollination, and playful opportunity Josie Barnard, Jo Dixon, Simon Perrill The digital ‘revolution’ affects every aspect of the writing and publishing process - and provides an opportunity to renew our articulation of the uniqueness of creative thinking. Writing now routinely involves multiple ‘modes’, with words placed amongst images and sounds in digital environments. New media technologies encourage experimentation, ‘cross-pollinating’ forms and platforms to interrogate how mind, body and technologies mingle.

This session uses the Writing in Practice Multimodal Writing Special Issue as a prism through which to view both the challenges and opportunities presented by our 21stcentury landscape to consider how writers can build resilience and not just survive but thrive.

Room 4: Digital Storytelling Antonia Luguori, Alison Mott Digital storytelling is a participatory, visual method connecting storytellers and story-listeners to create stories with emotional resonance and long-lasting, positive impact. In this workshop, Antonia Liguori and Alison Mott will share their experience of using the digital storytelling methodology in world-wide interdisciplinary projects to promote inclusion and diversity, mental health and well-being, intergenerational learning, and knowledge and understanding of heritage preservation issues and climate change. Participants will then work through two of the five steps of the DS process (script writing and storyboarding), creating and sharing a personal story. The session will end with a viewing of digital stories.

Room 5: Renga for Resilience Mel Parks Renga is an ancient Japanese form which uses linked stanzas to create a collaborative poem. Mel Parks used the form to create an accessible, inclusive, collaborative poetic research method to deepen the creative practice, connection and therefore resilience of a research team that needed to work separately and online during the Covid-19 pandemic. The AHRC-funded, transdisciplinary research project used storytelling to study the ways in which the immobilities of gender-based violence changed during the pandemic. This workshop will share the method used as well as offer suggestions, based on research, of other ways in which renga can be used in education as well as community settings.

18.00 – 19.00

DINNER BREAK

21.00 – 22.00

Room 1: Late Night Writes

22.00 – 22.30

Room 1: Night Time Poems (SOUNDCLOUD)

Tune in as you wind down for some poetry as you drift off to sleep.

23

Friday 8.15 – 8.45

BREAKFAST POEMS

Tune into Soundcloud for some poetry with your snap, crackle and pop!

9.00 – 9.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Writing in Practice Derek Neale, Anne Caldwell, Joanne Reardon, Heather Richardson, Edward Hogan This panel glimpses a range of creative-critical research from issues of Writing in Practice, a journal showing true resilience, reborn as it is with each issue. The outgoing editor has learned much from its volumes and contributors, some of whom gather here, offering testimony about what is possible: Mermaids’ mirrors on Instagram, the strains and gains of writing with an artist, the effect on process of retreat and solitude, along with prose poems about place, Ted Hughes’ place no less and histories of rolling programmes in a city full of cinemas. There are so many stories about stories and poems.

Room 4: Hear Yourself Think Judy Waite This contribution will explore the power of intentional silence. Silence may appear, as a practice, an obvious interlude between talking and doing, something we all engage in and that requires no conscious guidance, yet research demonstrates how focused, purposeful silence can make a quantifiable difference to learner outputs.

This workshop will demonstrate the value of silence as an aid to imagination, to creative thinking, and to problem solving. Through silence students engage with more than the tangible task; engaging emotion and whole-body awareness, opening potential for widening benefits related to ownership of ideas, confidence and motivation.

Room 5: Funding for Writers Jonathan Davidson Come along with a project idea that you would like to discuss. Think about who might benefit from this project (as artists, participants or audiences) and who might be a partner in this project that would be helpful. We will focus on Arts Council England funding, but the principles are similar for most funding streams.

If you need any support during the conference, please contact our technical team on admin@nawe.co.uk or call 0330 3335 909 24

Friday 10.00 – 10.30

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: ‘I’m Working on Things that take Too Long’ Eluned Grammich We have all experienced the sensation of time slipping through our fingers. The challenge is particularly acute for those attempting to combine the roles of carer, teacher, and writer. In this demanding triumvirate, inevitably one element (usually that of creative and critical practice) falls by the wayside. I argue that, as creative practitioners in education, resilience and renewal can be found in the act of interrogating our conception of time; that is, in theorising (and valorising) modes of waiting, enduring, maintaining, and persisting, rather than the traditional ‘clock time’ of wage labour – time, in other words, that must always be measurable and ‘filled’ to be deemed useful. Using theorist Lisa Baraitser’s concept of ‘Enduring Time’ in her 2017 book of the same name, I explore what it means to be a caregiver, writer, and educator during and in the wake of the pandemic. Drawing on Baraitser’s socio-philosophical work alongside that of other key feminist writers and theorists, including Ann Oakley and Rachel Cusk, I argue that recognizing an enduring or ‘unbecoming’ time that is ‘radically immovable [and] suspended’ can also constitute a form of radical resilience for practitioners who inhabit the multiple roles of educator, carer, writer, and researcher.

Room 4: Facing Our Fears Alice Penfold My proposal explores on the empowering possibilities of young adult fantasy fiction to address anxiety and its impact on self-identity. Using the novels of Patrick Ness and Frances Hardinge as a starting point, I aim to look at how reading and writing fantasy gives us a way of understanding reality and the anxiety of finding and feeling comfortable with a sense of self amidst the pressure of societal norms and ideologies. Fantasy, I hope to show, has the potential to help understand the relationship between internal anxieties and the shared system of language that we have to express them.

Room 5: Eating Sardines to Feed the Struggle Ravinder Basra Inherited credit and its privileges mean writers from marginalised communities will have less than a 10 percent chance of getting published. So, why teach and study this discipline? Amidst a pandemic, I felt a renewal of a past struggle that had faded out of view only to resurface and rise out of the COVID ashes into the light by movements like Black Lives Matter and the Me Too Movement. So, as an educator I wondered how to bring the struggle into my teaching practice? Well, resilience was required....to find out more join me for my presentation.

10.30 - 11.00

BREAK

25

Friday 11.00 – 11.50

Room 1:

UK ARTS COUNCILS LITERATURE PANEL Sarah Crown (ACE National),

Paul McVeigh (AC NI),

Lleucu Siencyn (Literature Wales),

Alan Bett (Creative Scotland) Following last year’s unique event – a special cultural funding panel comprising the literature leads from the four nations England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales - NAWE again convenes a rare gathering to discuss the state of the sector. Join us to find out how the sector is adapting to the pandemic and the future priorities for national literature development within and between the four nations.

12.00 – 12.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 2: Accentuating the Positives (First Story) Pippa Hennessy, Dan Powell, Dan Ingram-Brown During the 2020-21 COVID lockdowns, First Story writers-in-residence used online platforms to continue delivery of our creative writing programme to secondary school pupils experiencing disadvantage. The writers maintained our pedagogic principles of valuing individual voices and experiences, using concrete detail, and encouraging experimentation and risk-taking. Many of our writers discovered unexpected positives and benefits of online workshop delivery. In this panel session, veteran First Story writers Dan Powell and Dan Ingram-Brown will share their experiences, reflect on the benefits of online delivery and discuss potential ways to extend and develop effective online writing programmes in the future.

Room 3: Tastes of Ancestral Wisdom Anike Bello The body is a great teacher of resilience and can help in forging healthy co-existence with self, each other, and our natural surroundings. As humans we can all relate to senses in some way, this is an intimate part of the human experience that is not governed by ethnicity, location etc. This workshop facilitates opportunities to tune into the body and connect to stories embedded in the senses to shape creative writing. Taste will be the focus of the session as we collectively unearth and share stories in relation to ancestry and culture.

Room 4: Speculative Nature Writing Andrea Holland, Jos Smith What might the nature writing of the future sound like? How will it register changing relationships between humans, climate, land and wildlife? In an urgent and post-pastoral moment, what becomes possible? How do we write ‘natures’ that move beyond the immediate grasp of our senses? Speculative nature writing is an attempt to make visible possibilities that haunts us with uncertainty using writing as ‘a form of prototyping or design practice’ (Ravan)). Drawing on practice-based insights, we will discuss our individual approaches to the idea of speculation. We’ll offer a related writing prompt and conclude with a Q & A.

13.00 - 14.00

LUNCH BREAK

26

Friday 14.00 – 14.50 Room 1:

Whose Playing Field?

Creating an Inclusive Literary Culture that Works for all Writers

Sharmilla Beezmohun (Speaking Volumes), Nathalie Teitler, Rishi Dastidar Less than 2% of all authors and illustrators published in the last 11 years are British people of colour (BookTrust 2019). Only 1% of UK University professors are black (BBC 2021).

Initiatives come and go, political will changes, the spotlight moves on – but many writers who teach, write and publish do so alongside structural forms of racism that are a constant, unwelcome companion. As part of the NAWE conference on Renewal & Resilience, we’re asking what organisations can do to remove barriers and improve access? How can the literature sector can work for change, work against racism, and work to create a level playing field for all writers regardless of background? Sharmilla Beezmohun (Speaking Volumes), Nathalie Teitler (The Complete Works) and Rishi Dastidar will ask what actions can be taken by literature organisations to level the playing field and create an inclusive literary culture that works for all writers.

15.00 – 15.30

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: The rise of Creative Writing Studies in China Weidong Liu Creative writing studies in China started in 2009, and now about 200 colleges and universities offer courses in creative writing. After more than ten years of development, Chinese university and college researchers have established bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in creative writing. The theoretical research on creative writing by Chinese creative writers and researchers accelerates the development of creative writing. Creative writing researchers put forward the viewpoints of creativity-centred literary view, creative writing, and Chinese traditional cultural thought, and creative writing and Zen thought. Over the past ten years, Chinese creative writing researchers explored the interdisciplinary practice of creative writing, pedagogy for cultivating of the creative writers, and the integration of creative writing with traditional Chinese writing theories and formed a variety of consensus. It includes the cultivation of creative writers, the creativity of literary value, and the transmedia transformation.

Room 4: Playing with Virtual Place and Space Helen Chaloner (Literature Works) Literature Works is a small team operating across the unevenly connected South West region with a broad writer development remit. The team describe how their existing focus on developing sustained and relevant core offers with regional reach lent itself to digital delivery. When the pandemic hit, Literature Works found itself already equipped to produce a rich range of online activity. This in turn fed into the new place-based programme, Quay Words at Exeter Custom House, which was forced online. Capability was already in place to create playful, participatory online activities which nonetheless drew on place as their inspiration.

Room 5: Writing Ourselves, Writing Other Muli Amaye Building inclusive communities of practice in creative writing in education means there is a need for a diversity of the information provided in writing guides. Universities are in a bid to de-colonise the curriculum and writing is an aspect that needs to be considered. Just as in photography the lighting has to be adjusted for skin with melanin so too does the information and guidance provided for writers who are non-white and anybody who wishes to write ‘other’ in their own work. With a reference to language and stereotype I will consider what is needed.

27

Friday 15.30 - 16.00

BREAK

16.00 – 16.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Enough Love for all my Future’ Deirdre Daly This presentation describes the delivery of workshops in poetry and expressive/therapeutic writing for English-AsSecond-Language students at a London university. The aim of the workshops was to develop courage, confidence, and curiosity in students’ voices in English. An alternative to the university’s language/grammar classes, these were influenced by the work of Charmaine Pollard and Vicky Field in poetry therapy. I share teaching materials as well as some of the students’ poems. My title is taken from one of these. I also reflect on the adaptations I made for groups with mixed fluency levels in English to allow them to access resources of identity, memory and resilience, on which the efficacy of therapeutic writing depends. I hoped to empower the students and honour their experience of migration and multi-languaging.

The Tutor-Peer Elena Traina In this paper I will present a case study on my first experience as a tutor of Creative Writing in English as a Second Language (ESL) at Scuola Holden. As a tutor delivering the course for the first time, I am documenting the process of research and content design and I am experimenting with a peer-to-peer pedagogy, submitting creative, critical and reflective work for my students to review. Using observational and qualitative evidence, I aim to review the impact of this teaching approach to my students’ and my own learning.

Room 4: Scan Rave: A Transatlantic, Collaborative Approach to Scanning Poems Jocelyn Page, Cath Drake, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Maya Ribault, Sunni Brown Wilkinson Form is back, but meter is unfashionable. Five US- and UK-based poets gather monthly on Zoom to practice scansion. They invite you into their homes to join one of their ‘scan raves’, where they celebrate meter and its inherent complexity. How do they consider opposing interpretations and settle on a scansion? They will model their collaborative approach to learning prosody, scanning poems from around the world. They will also discuss how they found an unlikely opportunity to thrive as readers and writers during the restrictions of the pandemic, forming friendships and fostering a sense of wellbeing and community online.

Room 5: The Pilgrim-Writer Victoria Field Pilgrimage is an embodied practice aligned to values and principles of deep ecology, and is enjoying a huge upsurge of popularity. Pilgrimage is often seen as providing meaning, a way of engaging with the world, its human and more-than-human inhabitants and offering opportunities for transformation, whether in its secular, spiritual or traditionally religious versions. Expressive, therapeutic and creative writing similarly facilitate meaningmaking and connection. This presentation, based on my doctoral research on narratives of transformation in pilgrimage will explore how writing and boots-on-a-page might offer a conceptual, literal and meaningful way of reconceptualising our relationship with the world and beyond.

16.50 - 19.30

DINNER BREAK

28

Friday

SPECIAL EVENT 19.30 – 20.30 Room 1: THOMAS GLAVE

interviewed by JONATHAN DAVIDSON Our first evening reading features a reading and in-conversation with Thomas Glave, professor of creative writing and Caribbean studies at SUNY-Binghamton (New York) and a 2021–22 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nottingham. Thomas Glave is the author of four books and the editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Duke, 2008). An associate editor of Wasafiri, he is the 2021 writer in residence at the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing, a University of Liverpool Honorary Professor, and a trustee of Writing West Midlands (UK). A member of the Transition editorial board, his work has recently appeared in The White Review and is forthcoming in Small Axe. Thomas will be in conversation with Jonathan Davidson, CEO of Writing West Midlands.

21.00 – 22.00

Room 1: Apropos Prose and Poetry Open Mic

In this 60-minute online session, writers will read/perform their stories, extracts, poetry, creative nonfiction (memoir, personal essay), scripts, monologues, or hybrids to an engaged audience of listeners, readers, and other practitioners who just really want to hear it.

You’ll have 3-5 minutes to read/perform. To sign up for an open-mic slot, please email Dr Yvonne Battle-Felton at y.battle-felton@shu.ac.uk.

All are welcome.

The piece can be in any form (work-in-progress draft, published, notpublished), as long as you’ve written it.

29

Saturday 8.15 – 8.45

BREAKFAST POEMS

Tune into Soundcloud for some poetry with your snap, crackle and pop!

9.00 – 9.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 2: How is a Short Story like a Panic Attack? Melanie Jones It has been argued that horror fiction allows us to test and prepare for anxiety and fear in a safe space. But this approach doesn’t account for the ways that fictional anxiety seeps into our lives or why it comes back to haunt us when we can’t sleep at night. Pandemic anxiety is informed and deformed by every post-apocalyptic plague narrative we’ve encountered. This workshop explores ways to repurpose this anxiety through creativity. Using methods informed by research into therapeutic writing, participants will explore ways to rewrite panic and change the narrative.

Room 3: ‘All Will Be Well’ Nicola Hill, Morgaine Merch Leaud, Joanne Reardon, Melissa Bailey As teachers, how do we foster resilience in our students who may encounter difficult challenges far beyond the reach of the Creative Writing course? How do we develop our own resilience as writers? Can writing itself hold the key? A panel of four seasoned writers - academics and tutors from The Open University - will explore ways in which they have used personal experience to support their students. Each panellist will offer insights into creative methods of keeping themselves and their writing going while encouraging students to develop the skills they need to become stronger on the page and in life.

Room 4: Connecting Voices Fiona Linday, Amina Alyal, Susanne Roland, Shelley Tracey, Judi Sissons Four members of a NAWE Action Learning set, formed during COVID, share their experiences of developing anthologies with different writing groups. Susanna Roland created a free online writer’s ispace during lockdown1 with participants from UK, Argentina, USA, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. Shelley Tracey describes the process of creating an anthology about caring with family carers. This book focuses on self-care, resilience and creativity. Judi Sissons and Amina Alyal co-edited Words from a Distance (Stairwell Books 2021), therapeutic writing distilled into art. Fiona Linday facilitates another ACE supported anthology project- “Making Our World Better” across campus at Leicester University.

30

Saturday 10.00 – 10.30

CHOICE OF:

Room 2: Developing an Accessible, Adaptable Approach to Creative Writing in AP setting Laurence Kidd In this session, Laurence Kidd will discuss ways of facilitating strategies that enable an inclusive, safe space for creative thought and writing in an AP setting. This session will consider questions around physical and mental creative space, and ask: what does authentic agency look like? What are the pros and cons of freewriting conflict conversations? How can we model pedagogy to enable democratic writing communities for pupils and staff to inspire resilience and a growth-mindset? The session will also discuss ways of creating value through collaboration with critical networks within the school framework and beyond. How can we share platforms, practice, and expertise? What is the role of critical friends such as the Goldsmiths Alumni community of Writer/Educators?

Drawing on his own role in an AP setting, Kidd will discuss the benefits of school collaborations with Goldsmiths University, La Institut Français and the T S Eliot Foundation.

Room 3: Europe Calling from the Other Side of the Moon Lorena Briedis As the most representative association of creative writing in continental Europe, the EACWP has consolidated its engagement within the pedagogical debate. Over 2021, the EACWP celebrated its V International Pedagogical Conference, co-organized by University of East Anglia. A full European Day took place as well as new editions of its Teachers Training Course and Flash Fiction Contest. This year, two European institutions will join this talk in order to introduce their programs and share their inside experiences. Ultimately, thanks to our agreement of mutual membership with NAWE, this presentation intends to reinforce collaborative initiatives between continental Europe and the UK.

Room 4: Confidence Tricks Claire Collison How can we help parents and carers support children develop skills in areas they may have missed out on during the pandemic? Focused on family learning through play, Claire Collison designed playful ways of connecting with the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre (PPMCC) to develop confidence, particularly around articulacy and literacy, along with ‘take-away’ suggestions of ways to continue at home, with simple and accessible materials. Claire will describe some of the transferable activities that supported families in building confidence, week on week; the challenges of intermittent quarantining, and of engaging with families that had experienced isolation.

10.30 - 11.00

BREAK

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Saturday 11.00 – 11.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 1: Getting Started in Magazine Publishing Jane Commane, Romalyn Ante Writers want to publish. Editors want to find new voices. But for the new and emerging writer, the world of publishing can seem impenetrable. How do you get your work out there? How can you tell which publications will be right for you? What are the different requirements of magazine editors and book editors? What function do magazines and journals occupy in shaping culture - can they push the boundaries of form, content, voice? And what do you do if you look around and think, ‘there’s no one doing this’? Join Jane Commane (Under the Radar, Nine Arches Press) and Romalyn Ante (co-founder of harana poetry) for a discussion around how to get started publishing in magazines – and how to set up your own title if the work you want to read just isn’t out there.

Room 3: MaxLiteracy 2021: Writing with Resilience through the Visual Arts This panel conversation and discussion from the 2021 MaxLiteracy Awards programme reflects on the conference theme of creative writing and resilience.

Learning from the MaxLiteracy Awards 2021 projects panelists share insights and experiences from galleries and museums and creative writers that have worked collaboratively with learning settings, from hospital schools to those in tertiary education. Adapting and working in innovative and resilient ways under challenging circumstances during the global health emergency, the panel will also reflect on how this learning impacted on the development of those projects, resources and legacy outcomes.

The MaxLiteracy Awards The inaugural Max Reinhardt Literacy Awards were initiated and funded by the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust in 2014. With the support of the National Association of Gallery Education (Engage) and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), the awards have developed into a biennial programme enabling galleries, art museums and visual arts venues in England to support dedicated creative writing and literacy work with schools through art.

The 2021 MaxLiteracy Award recipients were: Newark Museum, Open Eye Gallery and The Turnpike.

Panellists include: Veronica Reinhardt, Trustee, (Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust), Jane Sillis, (Director, National Association of Gallery Education - Engage), Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde (MaxLiteracy Programme Coordinator and panel chair) and representatives from the 2021 host venue project teams: Hannah Gaunt (The Turnpike), Pauline Rowe, Creative Writer (Open Eye Gallery)

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Saturday 12.00 – 12.50

CHOICE OF:

Room 2: Resilience and Renewal in the Creative Writing classroom Gráinne Daly, Francis Gilbert, Peggy Riley In this interactive workshop, Gráinne Daly, Francis Gilbert and Peggy Riley will explore how the lessons learnt from the pandemic can be utilised in teaching creative writing classes, focusing upon the themes of resilience and renewal. They will bring together their collective experiences as creative writing teachers, to argue that the pandemic generated new forms of digital collaboration, new ways of thinking about inclusion and organising one’s working life, and made us reconsider our embodied practices and presences in the pedagogical sphere. Their talk will draw upon points discussed in their joint article, ‘Letting it all spill out’, in a recent edition (84) of the NAWE Writing in Education magazine.

Room 3: I didn’t Say That’ Amina Alyal, Oz Hardwick Amina Alyal and Oz Hardwick will present their experiences of collaborative writing, which has resulted in a number of books and performances, usually with a musical element, sometimes with images. They will be demonstrating the ways in which the input of writers, and indeed of musical composers, and of photographic images, come together to produce something none of the individuals imagined, but which has its own, new, coherence as it forms. As Tristan Tzara puts it, ‘The summit sings what is being spoken in the depths.’ There will be a presentation, examples, and a writing workshop.

Room 4: Community Writers’ Network: Practising inclusively on Zoom Jane Moss, Caleb Parkin, Liz Cashdan The landscape is changing. Those of us who facilitate writing in the community – whether in community places, schools, or online – are learning how to work in a new space: the Zoom room. Three members of NAWE’s Community Writers Sub-Committee offer examples of blended practice: Q Club at Derby Quad (Caleb Parkin); a community novel in Cornwall (Jane Moss), and Odd Lot drama group in Bristol (Liz Cashdan). We will share what we have discovered in our efforts to make Zoom inclusive, with some short writing exercises to illustrate the mingling of digital and traditional facilitation.

13.00 - 14.00

LUNCH BREAK

If you need any support during the conference, please contact our technical team on admin@nawe.co.uk or call 0330 3335 909 33

Saturday 14.00 – 14.50

Room 1:

Art in a Climate Emergency

Jacqueline Saphra, James Thornton, Kate Simpson What is the role of the artist in the face of catastrophic climate change? What can writers do to help hold governments to account? What tools and strategies can organisations employ to raise awareness and change attitudes - and is that enough? Join writers and organisations fighting to save the planet and build a sustainable future.

15.00 – 15.30

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Hold the Line Aly Stoneman Can writers engage meaningfully with ecological and climatic change? With policy makers slow to act – or even back-peddling – on climate agreements, and sea levels set to rise for centuries to come, as both a poet and community arts facilitator I am bound to ask, ‘but what can poetry do?’ This session will discuss different approaches, using two community arts projects focused around sea level rise, erosion and coastal pollution as case studies.

Room 4: Flexibility, Confidence, Sociability Laurie Garrison The Covid pandemic created a unique situation where far more teaching took place online than we would ever have imagined possible. In early 2021, I ran a survey to collect data about which teaching methods were or were not successful, whether these courses met expectations and how they impacted learners’ creative writing practice.

Some aspects of these courses were very successful, such as their flexibility and potential for confidence building, but other elements need improvement, such as social interaction between learners. Quantitative and qualitative results will be presented with a view to helping instructors improve the online course experience.

Room 5: Writing as Other Megan Constable How do you portray disability accurately whilst balancing the needs of the narrative?Much contemporary young adult fiction still regurgitates variants of damaging disability tropes such as the ‘super-crip’ and the ‘disabled sidekick’. Disabled characters are frequently used as plot devices or ‘inspiration porn’. What are the reasons for this continuation and how do writers avoid repeating these stereotypes? This presentation aims to discuss some of these questions, whilst considering the ethics of writing characters from marginalised backgrounds that the writer does not identify with. Can non-disabled writers produce quality literature that represents disability accurately, without being overtly didactic?

15.30 - 16.00

BREAK

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Saturday 15.45 – 16.15

CHOICE OF:

Room 3: Rooms of Whose Own? Sonja Frenzel When writers write, they inhabit thoroughly entangled rooms of their own: the material space of their writing scene, the critical-creative space of their psycho-physiological involvement with the more-than-human environment, and the literal space of their own and other writers’ texts. As writer-teacher-researcher, I am interested in how writerly agency and praxis are curiously other-taken (Latour), perpetually renewed and equally sustained in response to these entanglements. This paper presents a seminar format for teaching writing that merges creative writing with literary readings (Virginia Woolf) and eco-poet(h)ical theories (Clive Scott; Joan Retallack) to develop a future-oriented perspective on writerly modes of being.

Adversity & Adaptation Kate Potts In 2020-21 I delivered all of my HE creative writing workshops via zoom sessions, recorded video lectures, and asynchronous moodle discussion forums. How did the absence of ‘real’ interaction and communication impact on the functioning of the workshop, and how did we learn to compensate for the absence of bodies in common space? With short, participatory ‘experiments’ and discussion, this paper will explore the benefits and disadvantages of workshopping in virtual space, as well as potential positive applications of online and digital technologies in and alongside the physical workshop space.

Room 4: How to write as a community Sabrin Hasbun After two sold-out Creative Writing series at the Holburne Museum (Bath, UK) on how we can confront uncomfortable pasts together, this workshop brings some of the same exercises and techniques to explore the power of collective writing and build inclusive communities of practice. We will write as a group, sharing and shaping each other’s stories and we will reflect on how creative writing can help find common grounds and cherish diversity. Away from the common trope that writing is a solitary endeavour, this workshop interrogates which directions we can follow to create communities and create as a community.

Room 5: Developing Resilient Voices Amanda Epe The heart of creative writing is for our wellbeing. Many writers and speakers have titles projected on them as the speaker, the advocate for the area in which they write about, often called the voice for the voiceless. Whilst the narrator may have spoken up on issues that resonate to their readers and target audience, readers can have an alternative or slightly modified approach, and the writer is not their voice. For healing to occur we need a level of authority in creative writing, in developing resilience and authenticity the voiceless become voices.

WriteWell Claire Maguire The impact of writing on wellbeing is becoming more well known. There are many reasons, however, why people might struggle to access writing workshops within their local community. The Professional Writing Academy has been addressing this issue through its new initiative WriteWell, which draws on theory and research from the fields of education and therapeutic writing. In this case study, discover how WriteWell uses an online community learning model to allow more people to access the benefits of writing for health & wellbeing. The expressive writing material on WriteWell helps to reduce stress and anxiety, leaving space for more optimism,renewal and resilience towards life.

18.50 – 19.30

DINNER BREAK 35

Saturday

SPECIAL EVENT 19.30 – 20.30 Room 1: HANNAH LOWE

interviewed by LUCY SWEETMAN Hannah Lowe is a poet, memoirist and critic. She was named a Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poet in 2014 and won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2020. Her first poetry collection, Chick (20130, won the Michael Murphy Poetry Prize. Her latest, The Kids, a PBS Choice for Autumn 2021, was shortlisted for the 2022 TS Eliot Prize. She is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University. www.hannahlowe.me

22.00 – 22.30 Late Night Tales (SOUNDCLOUD) Tune in for some short tales before drifting off to sleep

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Contributor Biographies Amina Alyal has published poetry in journals, anthologies, and two collections, The Ordinariness of Parrots (Stairwell Books 2015) and Season of Myths (Indigo Dreams Publishing 2016), and academic publications. She lectures at Leeds Trinity University, and runs the open mic Wordspace. She was editor of Dream Catcher Magazine in 2020.

Muli Amaye is a writer who currently teaches creative writing at The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and is coordinator of the MFA. She has taught creative writing in Kurdistan, Iraq, and Lancaster UK. Her debut novel A House With No Angels is published by Crocus Press (2019).

Melissa Bailey (SFHEA) has worked for the Open University since 2006 – first as a tutor, and now as Staff Tutor in the School of Arts & Cultures. Her MA in Creative writing is from Lancaster University and she’s currently studying for a Creative Writing PhD with the OU. Josie Barnard is a writer of theory, fiction and non-fiction whose works include The Multimodal Writer (2019), a book that addresses the impact of the ‘digital turn’ on writing and publishing. She is, with the journal’s Principal Editor Derek Neale, co-editor of the Multimodal Writing Special Issue of Writing in Practice.

Sarah Barnsley is a poet, academic and member of/contributing editor to The Understory Conversation. Long-term creative and research interests in literature are complemented by developing interests in applied neuroscience and positive psychology. Her Understory of psychological pain is the focus of The Thoughts, due out in early 2022 with Smith|Doorstop.

Ravinder Basra is currently teaching at the University of East London. She is looking to change the very white canon of English Literature through her PhD that looks at the struggle of the South Asian Migrant in the 1800s. She is a BAFTA winner and nominee, and she was awarded the Alexander Bursary for her documentary about mental illness amongst Asian women. Ravinder worked for the BBC for over fifteen years where she was a Talks Writer/Producer.

Anike Bello is a writer and founder of Ọ̀RỌ̀ ÀNÍKÉ, a hub of resources and conversations exploring ancestry and culture linked to Africa. She is also the author of Connecting to Self Through Ancestry, and PẸ̀ LÚ ÌFẸ́ , a collection of poems exploring intersections between love, nature, and ancestry.

Susmita Bhattacharya is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her stories have been published internationally and been featured on BBC Radio 4. She is a lecturer at Winchester University and has worked on several Arts Council England funded projects. She was a mentor on the Middle Way Mentoring programme.

Emma Boniwell, has worked with writers for more than 20 years, most recently running a large programme of creative writing workshops for young people as Learning & Participation Manager for Writing West Midlands. Emma has also been the Project Lead for a Creative Europe project, READ ON, designed to encourage teenagers to read and write more https://www.sparkwriters.org/read-on-eu-project/.

Lorena Briedis is the manager of the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes. Writer and Creative Writing teacher at Escuela de Escritores (Madrid, Spain).

Christina Bunce is the director of WriteWell and is co-founder of Professional Writing Academy, delivering online learning and communities for organisations including Faber Academy, John Yorke Story and universities across the UK and Europe. Originally a nurse and medical journalist Christina is a pioneering online educator, author and academic excited by the potential of technology to transform learning and accessibility to talent development opportunities. christina@writewellcommunity.com

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Contributor Biographies Anne Caldwell is a freelance writer, a lecturer in creative writing for the OU. The author of four poetry collections, she co-edited the Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (2019). She worked for NAWE for over ten years and is now a RLF fellow at the University of Huddersfield. Her latest collection is Alice and the North (2020).

Rachel Carney is a poet, PhD student and creative writing facilitator based at Cardiff University and Aberystwyth University. Her research examines the use of ekphrastic poetry as a tool for visitor engagement in art museums. She is funded through the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in Arkansas. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks and is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for The Mercy of Traffic. Doubleback Books reprinted her second book, Discount Fireworks. https://doublebackbooks.wordpress.com/discount-fireworks-by-wendy-t-carlisle/ her website is www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

Liz Cashdan, former Chair of NAWE 2012-2015, was a founding member in the 80s. A secondary school English teacher then, Liz now teaches for the Open College of the Arts and Bristol Folk House. She has also been a member of the HE Committee and is now a member of the Community Committee. Her most recent publication is Things of Substance: New and Selected Poems (Five Leaves 2013) Helen Chaloner went from publishing PR in London to Arvon, where she became National Director. At Farms for City Children she ran a charity connecting inner city school children to the countryside. Helen is principal short story reader for the Bridport Prize. Follow Helen on Twitter: @LitWorksCEO Claire Collison is a poet, artist, and freelance educational practitioner, teaching creative writing and visual literacy, and facilitating learning in a wide range of settings. She creates educational resources for arts organisations, including the Government Art Collection, and works with art galleries and museums, designing and delivering courses and workshops.. clairecollison.com Megan Constable is a writer and fully funded PhD candidate, researching Creative Writing at Loughborough University. Megan’s research considers contemporary representations of disability in young adult fiction and intends to further illuminate the relationship between the creative and the reflective elements of composition, providing a theoretical framework for future creative practitioners to consider when writing as other.

Deirdre Daly is a Lecturer in Academic Literacies at Goldsmiths, London. Her research is about academic writing development, creative writing and poetry therapy/therapeutic writing. She focuses particularly on the contribution of writing to critical thinking. She also lectures in philosophy and contributes to the Anti-University and other radical education projects.

Gráinne Daly is an Irish Research Council funded PhD candidate in University College Dublin. She teaches Creative Writing at UCD and is a volunteer learning assistant in the Museum of Literature Ireland. A multi-genre writer, Gráinne’s work has been published in numerous publications. She is the 2019 winner of the UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award.

Jo Dixon is a poet and lecturer in creative writing at De Montfort University. Her article, ‘Reading and Writing Index Cixous: Reflections on Creative Writing Research in the Academy’, is a creative-critical exploration of multimodal research practices and the position of the scholar-practitioner. Purl (Shoestring Press) was published in Cath Drake’s collection ‘The Shaking City’ (Seren). https://cathdrake.com Cath Drake’s collection ‘The Shaking City’ (Seren) was highly commended in the 2020 Forward Prizes. ‘Sleeping with Rivers’ won the Seren/Mslexia prize and was a Poetry Book Society choice. Cath placed second in the Resurgence

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Contributor Biographies Poetry School eco-poetry prize (Ginkgo) and was short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Prize. https://cathdrake.com Nikolai Duffy is Associate Head of the Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Centre and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. His main research interest is in the intersection of creative and critical writing.

Amanda Epe’s books and short film are on aviation, adventure and travel genres. Her debut memoir A Fly Girl Travel Tales won the OBBL Award 2015 and has been listed as a recommended read by Forbes and Lonely Planet 2021. She has lead many creative writing workshops for mainstream pupils, SEN students, BAME groups and women. Amanda received a BEM in the Queen’s Honours Birthday list 2021 for services to empower women and girls.

Victoria Field is a writer, poetry therapist and researcher based at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her recent books include a poetry collection ‘A Speech of Birds’ and a memoir of marriage and pilgrimage, ‘Baggage: A Book of Leavings’, both from Francis Boutle. She thinks by walking.

Sonja Frenzel is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Modern English Literature at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Germany, where she coordinates the programme in artistic research and creative writing. A writer and translator herself, she firmly believes that creative writing opens pathways into critical thinking. Her current project is tentatively titled: “Now/Here” and it accommodates both scholarly and creative pieces.

Charlotte Gann has an MA from the University of Sussex in Creative Writing and Personal Development. Her poetry publications are: The Long Woman(Pighog), shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Award, Noir (HappenStance, 2016) and The Girl Who Cried (HappenStance, 2020) – all written from her Understory.

Laurie Garrison is a former university lecturer in English literature whose research focused on science and technology in the Victorian period. More recently she has worked in technology research and online communications, initiating projects such as Women Writers Chat, a popular tweetchat that has been recognized in the press for its innovation.

Hannah Gaunt is the Creative Producer for Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education. Prior to joining Engage Hannah was the Learning and Engagement Manager at The Turnpike CIC, a small independent gallery in Leigh, Greater Manchester. The Turnpike were at Max Literacy Award recipient in 2021, through which Hannah led the Concrete Poems project exploring architecture and modernism with KS2 children.

Frances George is an autistic, disabled freelance creative writing tutor. They are a published fiction author with a background in digital communications. They specialise in working with fellow neurodivergent writers, exploring how to develop a practice that is sustainable in responding to and nurturing for their unique mind-body.

Francis Gilbert is a Lecturer in Educationat Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Head of the MA in Creative Writing and Education and course leader for PGCE English. He has taught creative writing for many years and has published novels, memoirs, social polemics and educational guides. www.francisgilbert.co.uk Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde is the MaxLiteracy Programme Coordinator for Engage, the National Association of Gallery Education. With experience in both an arts engagement and research contexts working with children and young people, Ronda worked as the Head of Education and Research at John Hansard Gallery (2000-2018).

Eluned Gramich is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor University, and has recently completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Aberystwyth and Cardiff University, focusing on the legacy of the German expulsions on a family in modern-day Hamburg. Her debut novel, Windstill, will be published by Honno in October 2022.

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Contributor Biographies Oz Hardwick is the author of nine poetry collections and chapbooks, and a keen collaborator with artists in diverse media. With Amina Alyal, he has published As Close as Second Skins (Indigo Dreams, 2015) andThe Still and Fleeting Fire (Hedgehog, 2021). He is Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University.

Angela Hicken was Portsmouth’s Reader Development Librarian before becoming Hampshire’s Literature Development Officer.s. She worked closely with The Reading Agency on its Reading Partners consortium. Angela was an Advisor to the Winchester Poetry Festival Board from its inception until 2018. Angela is now Marketing and Operations Manager at Nine Arches Press and Project Manager for the West Midlands Readers’ Network.

Nicola Hill (SFHEA) is a novelist and short story writer who has taught Creative Writing for over 20 years. Her novel Amelia and the Virgin won the Michael Schmidt award. She attained her PhD in CW in 2019. Previous jobs have included statue restorer, ragroller, and barmaid.

Morgaine Merch Leaud (FHEA) is a novelist and poet. She has been a teacher for over 30 years, from reception to HE. As a teacher, she specialised in EBD, and has taught CW at the OU for the last 18 years. She has an MA and PhD in CW, and is autistic.

Sabrin Hasbun is an Italian-Palestinian transnational writer. Her AHRC-funded PhD focused on using creative nonfiction and multilingual writing to explore histories of minorities. She has recently worked as writer, editor, translator, and tutor for several institutions including Falmouth University, the Embassy of Palestine to the Holy See, and the international journal Transnational Literature Pippa Hennessy is a writer living in Nottingham who has published poetry, graphic fiction and creative non-fiction.

She has an MA in Creative Writing, has worked as a publisher for Five Leaves since 2010, and is First Story’s writer development lead and regional programme manager for the East Midlands.

Ed Hogan is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University. His recent stories have been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, and the V.S. Pritchett Prize. ‘Single Sit’ won the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 2021. Ed’s most recent novel is The Electric (John Murray, 2020).

Heather Holcroft-Pinn studied BA English Literature with Creative Writing at UEA and MA Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Sussex. She previously worked for the Devon Guild of Craftsmen and Tobacco Factory Theatres. Heather coordinates Quay Words at Exeter Custom House and other Literature Works projects.

Andrea Holland is Lecturer in Creative Writing at UEA. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Borrowed (Smith/Doorstop) and Broadcasting (Gatehouse Press) with many other creative and critical writing publications, including chapters in The Portable Poetry Handbook (Macmillan). She sits on the board of EACWP and on NAWE’s Higher Ed Committee.

Daniel Ingram-Brown is a First Story writer-in-residence for Yorkshire schools. He has an MA in Creative Writing and Drama in Education, and is the award-winning author of four young adult fantasy novels. He has also written over twenty plays, specialising in journey-based performance and large-scale community productions.

Melanie Jones is a PhD student at Birkbeck University where she teaches on the Creative Writing BA. She also works with 14-19 year olds whose anxiety means they are unable to access mainstream education. Melanie is working on a collection of short stories inspired by her PhD research into anxiety and creativity.

Laurence Kidd is a writer and teacher with almost 20 years’ experience working in a PRU setting. He has a BA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck College and an MA from the Writer/Educator programme at Goldsmiths University.

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Contributor Biographies Antonia Liguori is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Storytelling at Loughborough University’s Storytelling Academy. She’s been involved in many international research projects - to develop methods and tools to foster innovation in education, and to trial digital storytelling as a therapeutic intervention and a participatory methodology for inter-disciplinary research.

Fiona Linday enjoys freelance facilitating at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester. With lifelong learners, she edited Family Matters- an Anthology of New Writing, Dahlia Publishing, 2019, receiving Arts Council England support. The author of crossover fiction, Linday, adapts inclusive practice to meet creative needs of previously marginalised groups.

Twitter: @ukfl Website: https://fionalinday.co.uk Weidong Liu is a writer, researcher, and editor who is now the executive editor of Chinese Creative Writing Studies (half yearly), an editor of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Publishing at Shanghai University. He now teaches creative writing at Wenzhou University and as a guest researcher at the Chinese Creative Writing Center of Shanghai University. He recently published The Fundamental Theories in Creative Writing (2019, Shanghai University Press).

Claire Maguire manages, moderates and tutors the WriteWell community of writers. Former journalist and health columnist her passion is in the field of yoga and meditation. Claire has also spent many years working in the education sector lecturing and designing creative writing courses.clairem@writewellcommunity.com Kate McBarron is a writer, editor and writing for wellbeing practitioner and researcher. She is passionate about words and their ability to enhance our daily lives, from relaxation to self-discovery and workplace wellness. Kate is the key creator of WriteWell’s content, including Building Resilience and Finding Purpose courses. kate@writewellcommunity.com Ken Wilson-Max has written and illustrated over 50 books for children, including the global hit Astro Girl, about a young black girl dreaming of space travel. He releases work from other creators through Alanna Max, his publishing company, and since 2014 has been publishing the Chicken Newspaper for children all over the world. He is the George Padmore Institute’s 2020-21 writer-in-residence. For more information, please visit https://www.kenwilsonmax.com/ Andrew Melrose is Emeritus Professor at the University of Winchester and works with other universities throughout the UK, Greece, Australia and the USA. He has worked in Creative Writing for over 25 years and has over 150 publications in one form or another (books, films, articles, poems and songs).

Morgaine Merch Leaud (FHEA) is a novelist and poet. She has been a teacher for over 30 years, from reception to HE. As a teacher, she specialised in EBD, and has taught CW at the OU for the last 18 years. She has an MA and PhD in CW, and is autistic.

Jane Moss lives in Cornwall. She co-hosts www.thewritingretreat.co.uk, is published in magazines, journals and by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, and facilitates writing groups and workshops for hospices, charities and local communities.

Her PhD asks ‘How can the novel be a vehicle for community participation?’

Alison Mott is a writer, creative writing teacher and writer in the community, interested in the value of storytelling for building personal and communal resilience. She is a part-time Research Associate with the Storytelling Academy, researching the potential benefits of staging digital storytelling workshops in educational and community settings.

Derek Neale is Professor of Creative Writing at the OU. He is a novelist and short story writer. His latest book is Writing Talk (2020), a collection of interviews with playwrights, novelists and life writers. He is the outgoing principal editor of Writing in Practice, having edited the journal since 2017.

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Contributor Biographies Caroline Oakley has been a professional editor for over 30 years and has worked with award-winning writers across all genres including Ian Rankin, Michael Moorcock, Tricia Sullivan, Crystal Jeans and Cynan Jones. She has masters level degrees in Creative Writing and Teaching and has co-authored works of non-fiction.

Jocelyn Page teaches English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her debut pamphlet, ‘smithereens’, was published by tall lighthouse press (2010) and ‘You’ve Got to Wait Till the Man You Trust Says Go’ was the 2016 winner of the Goldsmiths’ Writers Centre’s inaugural Poetry Pamphlet award. www.jocelyn-page.com.

Caleb Parkin is Bristol City Poet, published widely in magazines, journals, and commissions. He tutors for Poetry Society, Poetry School and First Story and holds an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. Debut pamphlet: Wasted Rainbow, (tall-lighthouse, Feb 2021), debut collection: This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches, Oct 2021).

Mel Parks is a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator. Her workshop series: The Writer’s Notebook, celebrates and values the writing process. She has an MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) and her research focusses on creative practice for social change, with a specialism of the maternal, building on 20 years’ experience writing about children and families. www.honeyleafwriting.com Alice Penfold is a Curriculum Lead with a School Trust and a Pedagogy Lead with the charity Frontline. A former English teacher and school-wide Reading Lead, Alice is passionate about reading and creative writing and is studying part-time for a PhD at Goldsmiths, exploring representations of anxiety in young adult fantasy.

Simon Perril’s most recent poetry book is The Slip (Shearsman 2020). His article ‘On Metis: Or, What the Fox and Octopus taught me about Practice Research’ argues for multimodality as a form of craftiness. He is director of Leicester Centre for Creative Writing at DMU, and Professor of poetic practice.

Michelle Phillips studied English Literature BA and Publishing at MA. She works across the charity’s digital strategy, from commissioning web design projects, producing copy and running online events to managing social media.

Michelle also provides support to the executive team, assisting in operations, programming and logistics.

Kate Potts teaches poetry and creative writing for Middlesex University and The Poetry School, freelances as a mentor, editor and events producer, and works for an independent publisher. Her most recent poetry collection Feral (Bloodaxe) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and a Telegraph poetry book of the month.

Dan Powell is a First Story writer-in-residence for East Midlands schools. An award-winning short story writer, he spent ten years as an English teacher before completing an MA in Creative Writing at MMU. He leads writing workshops in schools and at literary festivals.

Emma Purshouse is a freelance writer and performance poet from the Black Country. In October 2019, she became Wolverhampton’s first Poet Laureate, a post she held for two years. She’s a poetry slam champion and performs her work across the country. Emma is coauthor of The Nailmakers’ Daughters (Offa’s Press). In 2021 her novel Dogged was published by Ignite Books.

Leila Rasheed is the author of many fiction and non-fiction books for children. Her most recent works are published

by Scholastic (Kamala Harris: A Life Story and Empire’s End: A Roman Story). She created the Megaphone Writer Development Scheme in 2015 with funding from Arts Council England. www.megaphonewrite.com.

Joanne Reardon (PhD, FHEA) is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University. She has taught Creative Writing in community and HE settings for over 20 years. A writer of drama, prose and poetry, her first novel The Weight of Bones was published by Cinnamon Press in 2020.

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Contributor Biographies Veronica Reinhardt worked as a television producer and now supports charities in creating their own educational films. She is a Trustee of the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust and in 2014 asked Engage and NAWE to help develop a programme to bring schools into partnerships with writers and galleries to support literacy. This evolved into MaxLiteracy which now has a renewed focus of supporting young people’s mental health through writing.

Maya Ribault’s poetry has appeared in Agni, Bloodroot, Cloudbank, North American Review, Speak, The New Yorker, and TSR Online. Her chapbook was released by Finishing Line Press in 2020. She served as the 2020-2021 writer in residence at St. Albans School and is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Heather Richardson is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University. Her current research interest is multimodal writing, with a particular focus on combining narrative textiles, digital storytelling, visual art and flash fiction/non-fiction. Her novels are Magdeburg (Lagan Press, 2010) and Doubting Thomas (Vagabond Voices, 2017).

Peggy Riley is a writer, playwright, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University.

She has run writing workshops for the past twenty years in schools, libraries, festivals and prisons as well as for social prescribing for wellbeing. Her work has been published, produced, broadcast and installed. www.peggyriley.com Susanna Roland is Writer in Residence at101 Outdoor Arts, on the former USAF cruise-missile site at Greenham Common, where she ran an intensive writer’s lab on site-specific work. She writes and performs flash fiction, poetry and has a Creative Writing MA with distinction (Brunel University London.)www.susannaroland.co.uk Pauline Rowe is a writer and poet with over 15 years-experience working in community, health and gallery settings.

She has a full collection and 5 pamphlets and 2 recent exhibitions with photographers. She has a PhD from Liverpool University and an MA in Creative Arts. Her pamphlet The Weight of Snow (Maytree Press) won the 2021 Saboteur Award for best poetry pamphlet.

Cindy Shearer is Professor and Program Chair for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing and the PhD in Integral Transpersonal Psychology at CIIS in San Francisco. She a writer and text/Image artist. She is working on a collection of personal essays on writing as art-making.

Jane Sillis is the Director of Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education, the lead body for visual arts engagement and participation in the UK and beyond. Engage’s c800 members include colleagues in museums alongside those working in the visual arts and heritage. Jane has a long career in the cultural sector. Before joining Engage in 2005 she was a consultant specialising in audience engagement in museums and galleries across the UK and internationally.

Judi Sissons practices on the border between art and therapy. After teaching Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire, she established The Writing Space in 2012. She holds an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing and Personal Development (Sussex University). She has published in anthologies. www.thewritingspace.co.uk Jos Smith is Associate Professor in Contemporary Literature at UEA. He works in the environmental humanities and is the author of The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place. He is a poet and essayist with a particular interest in the way creative-critical work can intervene in ecocritical debates.

Amy Spencer is a post-doctoral research assistant and writer at Bath Spa University as part of the Amplified Publishing project, researching innovation in publishing. She has a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London where her research focused on understanding the process of collaborative authorship in digital writing, and an MA in English from King’s College London.

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Contributor Biographies Aly Stoneman is a poet, tutor, and community arts manager. Her research and writing explore human relations with the natural world in a changing climate. Aly has been a resident writer with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and the Wildlife Trusts, and a winner of the Buxton Poetry Prize (2015). www.alystoneman.co.uk.

Anne Taylor is a writer, teacher and Feldenkrais practitioner who currently runs therapeutic, reflective and creative writing groups for the mental health charity MIND and with medical students, doctors and others working in the healthcare sector. She is also co-director of the Professional Writing Academy courses – Introduction to Therapeutic Writing and Running Writing Groups Shelley Tracey is a published poet, creative writing facilitator and Poetry Therapy Practitioner. She coordinates a large poetry programme for Community Arts Partnership, Belfast, mentors writers, and works with carers and reminiscence groups. Shelley has published many papers on creativity and arts-based methods in education. Twitter: @Shelleytracey Website: https://shelleytracey.co.uk/ Elena Traina is a writer, a tutor and a researcher in Creative Writing Studies. This year she has won a Special Recognition for her first script for a short film The Morning After in the framework of the Venice Film Festival; and published her debut novel Amarantha with Kurumuru Books.

Judy Waite is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at University of Winchester. She has published over fifty works ranging from fiction for children and young adults to academic publications engaging creative process and practice as pedagogies. Adopting holistic approaches, current research explores conscious and subconscious triggers for evolving writing, embedding less visible creative practices withing education at all levels of learning.

Shelagh Weeks has been a writer, teacher and collaborative editor for thirty years, working in schools, colleges, community settings and Higher Education. She has worked nationally and internationally, teaching and giving readings, has worked assessing short stories for the BBC and has published short stories and a novel.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field and The Ache & The Wing. Her work has been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Sherwin W. Howard Award and runner-up for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.

Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, published by Eyewear (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and his poems have appeared in several magazines, most recently Agenda, The High Window, and Wasafiri. He teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University.

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National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) As the subject association for Creative Writing, NAWE aims to represent and support writers and all those involved in the development of creative writing both in formal education and community contexts. Our membership includes not only writers but also teachers, arts advisers, students, literature workers and librarians.

Membership benefits (depending on category) include: •

3 free issues a year of Writing in Education

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reduced rate booking for our conferences and other professional development opportunities

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advice and assistance in setting up projects

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representation through NAWE at national events

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free publicity on the NAWE website

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access to the extensive NAWE Archive online

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weekly e-bulletin with jobs and opportunities

For Professional Members, NAWE processes Enhanced Disclosure applications to the DBS and can assist in dealing with any other government clearance schemes. The Professional Membership rate also includes free public liability insurance cover for members who work as professional writers in any public or educational arena, and printed copies of the NAWE magazine.

Institutional membership entitles your university, college, arts organization or other institution to nominate up to ten individuals to receive membership benefits.

For full details of subscription rates, including e-membership that simply offers our weekly e-bulletin, please refer to the NAWE website: www.nawe.co.uk

To join NAWE, please apply online at www.nawe.co.uk Tower House, Mill Lane, Askham Bryan, York YO23 3FS • 0330 3335 909

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