Spark Summer Writing Challenge

with Rick Sanders and Ruth Stacey, for school years 7 – 12, aged 12 -17

Monday 27th July 2020 – Friday 31st July 2020

5 days of online writing prompts and one to ones between 9.30am and 3.30pm

(session invite to follow after enrolment)

Are you – or do you know – a young person (school years 7 – 12, aged 12 – 17) who loves writing or wants to be a writer?

This summer, we are running our first Spark Summer Writing Challenge for young people like you! Come and join us on Monday 27th – Friday 31st July for five days of writing, inspiration, and quality feedback all from your own home.

You’ll write new genres following writing prompts set daily, and you’ll get a chance to get one-on-one feedback at least twice in the week, if you want it. You can try your hand at writing a range of styles from poetry to audio drama to flash fiction to wordplay. You’ll be writing for fun, being as creative as you want to be, and you’ll meet a whole network of other young writers.

You will have the option to submit pieces created during the week to our anthology, gathering together some of our favourite poetry, prose and plays of the Spark Summer Writing Challenge. This is your chance to take the first step in becoming the writer you want to be.

With Ruth Stacey and Rick Sanders, you will flex your writing muscles and have an opportunity to work with experienced poets and writers to review your own work, discover your creative strengths and find out what you need to do to take your writing to next level!

Cost:

Full price: £29

A limited number of Bursaries are available. Please contact Emma for more information.

Biography: 

Ruth Stacey is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Worcester. Stacey’s second full collection, I Ursula, was published Jan 2020, by V.Press Poetry. Her first poetry collection Queen, Jewel, Mistress was published by Eyewear Publishing, 2015, and her pamphlets include Inheritance (Mothers Milk Books, 2017). A duet with another poet, Katy Wareham Morris, this explores 19th century experience of motherhood, contrasted with a 21st century mother’s voice. Inheritance won Best Collaborative Work at the 2018 Saboteur Awards. A poetic memoir, How to Wear Grunge, was published by The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in 2018 and was shortlisted for best pamphlet at the Saboteur Awards 2019. An experimental pamphlet, Viola the Virgin Queen, is forthcoming from Knives, Forks and Spoons. Stacey is currently writing an imagined memoir in poetry of the tarot artist Pamela Colman Smith, as part of her PhD study.

Rick Sanders, aka Willis the Poet, is an established comedy stand-up poet based out of the mighty West Midlands. As well as being a regular on the Birmingham poetry circuit, Willis also actively supports the flourishing spoken word event scene in the region, his sticky sausage-fingers in as many pies as he can.

Willis has set up a monthly poetry slam event in Dudley to bring more spoken word to the Black Country and hosts a series of Comedy Poetry Nights in the Midlands and beyond. He is also co-host of Tilt on the Mic in Birmingham and presents Brum Radio Poets, both on the monthly radio show and at the quarterly live showcase event in Waterstones. He also hosts Whisky & Words at the Birmingham Whisky Club, bringing together two of his favourite things.

Please note: you must sign up for the full course even if you do not complete the course. No partial course ticket is available. 

The Spark Summer Writing Challenge is for under 18s only.