Bristol Writers’ Day
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About the event
We are delighted to be partnering with Bristol Libraries to offer a day of free, online events celebrating Bristol's local writing and publishing. The programme includes two short story workshops and a panel discussion featuring local writers, pubishers and booksellers.
Tickets on sale now via Eventbrite.
Workshops have limited capacity and are first-come-first-served.
Workshop 1 - Embracing the strange with K.M. Elkes
11am-12:30pm
Embracing the Strange – how incorporating the strange, the peculiar and the downright bizarre can help liberate your writing from the curse of competence. A 90 minute workshop mixing innovative writing exercises and analysis of short fiction texts. Aimed at novice through to more experienced writers, this workshop is led by award-winning author KM Elkes.
K.M. Elkes is the author of the short fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) which was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award in 2020. Individual short stories have won, or been placed, in several international writing competitions including the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature VS Pritchett Prize, Fish Publishing Prize and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. His work has appeared in more than 40 literary anthologies and journals, and has featured on school curricula in the USA, India and Hong Kong. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University, where he won the Blackwell’s Prize. As a writer from a rural working class background, his work often reflects marginalised voices and places. He is currently working on a novel.
Workshop 2 - Getting your story to publishable standard with Billy Kahora
2-3:30pm
Getting Your Story To A Publishable Standard - all of us have a story in us but how do you get your story to a publishable standard? This workshop provides both beginning and experienced writers with a whistle-stop tour of the basics of the short story to get it to the best possible version it can be.
Billy Kahora has written a non-fiction novella titled The True Story Of David Munyakei (2010) and a short story collection, The Cape Cod Bicycle War (2019). His story 'Urban Zoning' was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2012, The Gorilla’s Apprentice in 2014. He wrote the screenplay for Soul Boy and co-wrote Nairobi Half Life which won the Kalasha awards. His short fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in Chimurenga, McSweeney’s, Granta Online, Internazionale and Vanity Fair and Kwani. He is working on a novel titled The Applications. He is also currently a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol and has been awarded Writers fellowships in Italy, U.K, Germany, Denmark and South Africa.
Getting your story to publishable standard with Billy Kahora
Panel discussion
6-7pm
Join us for an online discussion about Bristol's local writing, publishing and bookselling scene.
Jessica Taylor is the co-owner of Max Minerva's Bookshop in Westbury Park, which is 3 years old this September. She currently serves on the Booksellers Association Advisory Council and was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2020.
Joe Melia is a former bookseller and reviewer, and is the coordinator of The Bristol Short Story Prize.
Lily Green is the founder of No Bindings, an independent press and publishing studio in Bristol that takes an innovative, multi-media approach to publishing.
