Are you a writer looking to develop your craft, and get published? Do you want to understand more about the publishing process from the people who know it best, such as editors and literary agents?
We’re delighted to be partnering with Literature Works to offer this full day conference packed with practical presentations and panel discussions from authors and publishing industry professionals. Our programme has been purpose-built to provide a range of guidance on the writing craft as well as insight into the world of publishing, while our networking lunch gives you a unique opportunity to connect with writing peers and build your own community.
Attendees will hear from established writers Claire Fuller and Lily Dunn as they share essential advice on developing your craft as a writer and working towards publication. Plus two dedicated panels across the day will provide opportunities for you to hear from a selection of agents who will demystify the submission process, and also a selection of publishers and editors who will talk you through a range of possible routes to publication as well as answering your questions.
Schedule
10.00am: Registration
10.30am-10.45am: Intro
10.45am-11.45am: Author Talk with Claire Fuller
11.45am-12.00pm: Short comfort break
12.00pm-1.00pm: Agent Panel
1.00pm-2.00pm: Lunch
2.00pm-3.00pm: Author Talk with Lily Dunn
3.00pm-3.15pm: Break
3.15pm-4.15pm: Publishing panel
4.15pm: Closing remarks
All attendees will be able to purchase books by our session leaders, as well as writing guides from Writers & Artists, at a discounted rate.
Further speakers to be announced soon!
I’m a novelist and short fiction writer. For my first degree I studied sculpture at Winchester School of Art. I began writing fiction at the age of 40, after many years working as a co-director of a marketing agency. I have a Masters (distinction) in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Winchester. I live near Winchester, England with my husband and a cat called Alan, and I have two grown-up children.
My five novels are: The Memory of Animals, (2023); Unsettled Ground (2021) (which won the Costa Novel Award 2021, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction); Bitter Orange (2019) (longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award); Swimming Lessons (2017) (shortlisted for the Encore Prize for second novels, and Livre de Poche Prize in France); and Our Endless Numbered Days (2015) (winner of the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction). They have been translated into more than twenty languages.
My short stories have been published in many literary journals and shortlisted in prizes. Baker, Emily and Me, won the 2014 BBC Opening Lines competition (read it here), and my story, A Quiet Tidy Man, won the Royal Academy and Pin Drop short story award 2016, (Listen to Juliet Stevenson reading it), and it has been included in the Pin Drop / Simon & Schuster anthology: A Short Affair.
Lily Dunn is an author and mentor. Her latest book is Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, March 2022), a literary memoir about her enduring love for a delinquent father, which was described as 'an astonishing and valuable memoir' by Juliet Nicolson (The Spectator), and awarded Nonfiction Book of the Year by The Guardian and The Spectator, 2022.
Her personal essays have appeared in Granta, Hinterland, Litro and The Real Story in the UK and she is a regular writer for the international Aeon magazine. Her first novel, Shadowing the Sun was published by Portobello Books, and the Big Issue described it as ‘a vivid and meaningful portrait of innocence destroyed’.
Lily is currently writing Into Being: The Radical Craft of Memoir and its Power to Transform, due to be published by Manchester University Press in 2025.
She is co-editor of A Wild and Precious Life: A Recovery Anthology, a collection of stories and poetry from writers in recovery from addiction and mental illness (Unbound, May 2021).
I am proud to represent a list of intriguing, clever, conversation-starting writers, across both fiction and non-fiction. Most of my authors write contemporary stories, often led by themes of love, identity, and coming-of-age; for me, vital qualities to a great story include emotional depth, authenticity, a warm, engaging voice and irrepressible energy. I want to be surprised, and to read everyday experiences and relationships told with nuance and colour. Our lives are rich and varied, and I like my books to reflect that too.
Favourite authors include Kate Atkinson, Claire Keegan, Curtis Sittenfeld, Elizabeth Strout, Shirley Jackson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nora Ephron. I’m drawn to rich and multi-layered stories of women, families, friendships and relationships, and love small communities with lots going on beneath the surface; I prefer the small and intimate to the epic and world-affecting.
I want to bring under-published experiences to both editors and readers, and to broaden the books we’re publishing to include everyone. I’m a feminist and celebrate books that empower us, or that make us feel recognised and heard.
Alongside literary, book club and commercial fiction, I represent non-fiction writers including narrative writing on relationships, pop culture, social history and food, and a small number of cookery and other illustrated books. Please note that I am not currently considering memoir; I love memoir writing but unfortunately it’s a very difficult time to find space for new voices, and I’m working with enough memoir for now.
In case it’s helpful to know what I don’t represent, I do not work with the following genres: poetry, Young Adult or children’s, fantasy, supernatural, dystopian, sci-fi, thriller, horror or crime fiction, business, diet or health books.
I worked for Waterstones before joining the agency A P Watt in 2003. I moved to Blake Friedmann in 2013, becoming Vice Head of the Book Department and a Bookseller ‘Rising Star’ in 2017, and a Director in 2020. In 2021, I was delighted to win the Romantic Novelists’ Association Agent of the Year Award. I regularly visit literary festivals, courses and events, and enjoy giving talks and holding workshops for writers. I have been a judge for the Bristol Short Story Prize and Manchester Fiction Prize, and I’m on the board of the Working Class Writers’ Festival.
Jade Chandler is the publishing director of Baskerville, the literary crime and thriller imprint of John Murray Press, based at Hachette UK's Bristol office. Baskerville is home to bestselling and critically acclaimed writers including Mick Herron, Charlotte Philby, Mel Pennant and Jessie Elland.
Kate Johnson is an agent as well as UK rights manager for Wolf Literary Services and the Gillian MacKenzie Agency. Before moving to Wolf Literary, Kate was an agent and Vice President at Georges Borchardt, Inc. She has edited and reported at StoryQuarterly, Bookslut.com, New York Magazine, and elsewhere, and graduated from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Her authors have won the PEN Faulkner Award, Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, Whiting Award, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize for Fiction, National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, the Nigeria Prize for Literature, and have been longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the PEN Open Book Award. Kate regularly visits literary festivals and universities, and has chaired the judging panel for the Bristol Short Story Prize and Bath Short Story Award.
Kate represents literary and upmarket fiction as well as a range of narrative nonfiction and select memoir, and is interested in food, running, obsessives, unconventional families, art, global stories, social justice, mental health, medicine, and the environment. She loves working with journalists. Across all her projects, she looks for authentic voices and books that uncover something off-kilter in the everyday, or conversely something relatable in the extraordinary.
Joe Vaughan is a writer, publisher, artist and bookseller based in Bristol. He is the publisher at Strange Region, a small press for experimental writing. Previous creative work can be found with Resonance Extra, Cirkulacija 2, SVS Collective, First Terrace Records, 90mil and elsewhere. His books include Three Hundred Thousand Souls and Colliding[...]Often Missing.
Strange Region publish limited runs of books by contemporary artists and writers. They believe publishing is a space in which work can be developed, expanded, and exploded through the publishing process. They include their writers at every stage of publication to create books that represent an authentic expression of an author’s unique voice.
They endeavour to use publishing as a collaborative tool to celebrate writing as performance, as architecture, as a mechanical component of creative practice and as a space to enjoy the perilous corners of the human experience.
Literature Works are the literature development agency for the South West region.
We support writers at all stages of their careers, connecting them with opportunity and helping them help themselves. We are committed to diversity and to the socially engaged use of literature to develop communities and support wellbeing.
We do this by running workshops, writing courses, talent development programmes, providing seed funding and commissioning writing professionals to work in communities.
We work in partnership with a broad range of cultural organisations, encouraging relationships between writers and communities by running residencies in all sorts of settings – visitor centres, schools, museums, libraries, care homes – at inner city, rural and in between locations, supporting the varying demographics in the South West region.
Our region is large, encapsulating a varied demographic of both major cities and rural areas, from Gloucestershire down to Land’s End and across to Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. We believe that literature is for everyone and strive to ensure the best of South West talent is given a foundation to thrive.
The workshop fee of £95 (incl. VAT) is payable in full online. Members of Literature Works can buy tickets at a discounted rate. Please contact the Literature Works team to get your discount code!
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This is an in-person event. Joining instructions and full guidance will be provided by the W&A Team a week before the event start-date. All event times noted on this page are UK time.
Please note that payment instalment plans are available for all W&A events, writing courses and editing services. Contact W&A Admin on [email protected] so that we can find a payment schedule that works for you.
Accessible to All
It’s of real importance to Writers & Artists that our events and courses remain accessible to all.
- There are a limited number of bursary places available for this event. For more information on bursary support, please contact Literature Works via email at [email protected]
- This event will include written text and visuals, both during and in the form of handouts from the sessions. Please contact us in advance so that we can make arrangements to be sure all documents appear in a format that works for you.
- If you’d like to attend but have any questions or concerns regarding accessibility, then please email [email protected]
