KathyPage.info - Kathy Page, writer

When I began to teach fiction writing in the UK there was a still a lingering prejudice against it. Shakespeare and Dickens had never signed up for creative writing courses and so, the argument went, why do we need them now? Isn’t writing a matter of talent, you’ve either got it or you haven’t?

Many of our great contemporary writers have also never been anywhere near a creative writing course; however, the fact is that all of us, whatever our natural facility do, one way or another, have to learn how to write (and keep on learning, because every book is different). We learn to write by writing and rewriting and testing the results on readers, whether they be trusted friends, an agent, or editor - and then finally, some kind of wider public. Of course, we learn as well from reading.

A writing course is not at all essential to becoming a writer, and may indeed be anathema to someone who has an intensely private relationship with their work. But for others, it can be intensely stimulating and supportive and will provide a good ground to test work on. The writer still has to learn for him or herself, but the course can save a writer time by bringing his or her attention to problems that might take much longer to identify when working in a vacuum. Of course, teaching writing is a very sensitive business. It should attend not only to matters of craft and technique but also, just as much, to the process of writing itself.

Photo credit Barbara Machin

I have taught fiction writing in schools, colleges and universities in several countries, and held long-term writer’s residencies in schools and a variety of other institutions and communities, including a fishing village and a men's prison. I have over fifteen years' experience as a facilitator of fiction and creative writing workshops.

Consultancy/Teaching

Teaching Writing

Teaching Experience

Inquires about teaching or workshops:

Recommended books about writing.

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction. ‘..whatever the genre may be, fiction does its work by creating a dream in the reader’s mind.’

Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners. ‘You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don’t, then probably no one else will.’

The Agony and the Ego, ed. Claire Boylan. Original essays by writers such as John McGahern, Deborah Moggach and John Banville. Includes Fay Weldon editing herself with reproductions of the original text. A wonderful book but out of print, so snap it up if you find and second hand copy.

Steven King, On Writing. ‘Let me urge that you take your story through at least two drafts; the one you do with the study door closed and the one you do with it open.’

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft. A course book that includes an anthology of contemporary short fiction, useful discussion topics and exercises.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life. ‘The line of words fingers your own heart. It invades arteries, and enters the heart on a flood of breath; it presses the moving rims of thick valves; it palpates the dark muscle strong as horses, feeling for something, it knows not what.’

Steering the Craft, Ursula K Le Guinn. Pithy observations, examples and exercises. ‘The sound of language is where it all begins and what it all comes back to.’

Fred Stenson. Thing Feigned or Imagined. ‘However you orchestrate your fictional text, you will confront the need for something that makes the story move and urges the reader to move with it.’

Renni Brown and Dave King, Self -Editing for Fiction Writers. Basic, practical advice.

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Section Updated: Tue, Jan 24, 2006