Paul Harris leads our Writing Boot Camp for Busy People at Circle of Misse 20-26 Sept. 2010. 

Annie Kirby recorded a great interview about writing and the short story with Express FM 93.7 in Portsmouth, UK last week. It will be broadcast on Tuesday 11 May at 7 p.m. If you don't live in Portsmouth you can listen to it online at ExpressFM.com. They also have a "listen again" function in case you miss it on Tuesday. Check it out.

There's still time to book a spot on one of Annie's June courses at Circle of Misse. Book now.

Award-winning Poet Meryl Pugh urges us to not be intimidated by poetry and to use what it can teach us no matter what genre we write. She offers inspirational and practical advice to beginning poets, discusses her own poetic beginnings and suggests some great reading.

Get more of this wonderful support and advice, not to mention an exciting holiday, by joining Meryl at Circle of Misse in July. She leads two courses: a Jumpstart course for those interested in any genre of writing who want to get started and write more fluidly and poetically about the world around them; and a Poetry Boot Camp for those wanting to explore all the possibilities of poetry writing with Meryl as their guide. Because of our unique programme design and it's small class size, both these courses offer a level of individual attention to you and your work that you just don't find in other places. Read what past participants have to say about the Misse Experience.

Nicholas Hogg, along with other leading writers including Hilary Mantel, Toby Litt, Lionel Shriver and Maggie O'Farrel, has his prize-winning short fiction available for downloading through the innovative Ether Books iPhone app. Stories include his New Writing Ventures winning story Zen, Bridport Prize finalist Happy Birthday, as well as his BBC broadcasted Naked.

Join Nicholas in Misse for a Novel writing course 21-27 June or a travel writing Jumpstart course 16-20 June. 

Great news! Just heard that Annie won last week's on-line real time short story competition at Write-Invite: http://www.write-invite.com/read-story.php?id=1457 

Annie Kirby, Asham Award winning short story writer, joins us again to offer advice on how to balance writing craft with inspiration, the writers who inspire her, and her personal experiences with short story contests.

Annie leads two courses at Circle of Misse in June. If you have any questions about the courses, drop us a line.

See you in Misse in June.

Enjoy.

And if you like our theme music, it's called Acclimate from the album Cool Aberrations by General Fuzz. You can download it at www.magnatune.com

Award-winning short story writer Annie Kirby shares an excerpt from her forthcoming novel Blood, Hands, Moon, Snow. Annie joins us at Misse June 2-6 for a Creativity Jumpstart course aimed at helping participants start writing by exploring story-telling and methods for starting to write and continuing. She also plans to lead a Short Story Boot Camp June 7-13 for those with an idea for a story, or a work-in-progress they want help with. Annie hopes to help participants leave with a draft of a story that they can continue to polish. Annie is an Asham Award winner for short fiction and her stories regularly appear on Radio 4 and in anthologies. She says she is excited about both courses and energized about working with hanging out in Misse with her course participants.

To get a better idea of the Misse experience, check out our photo gallery and testimonials from courses during the Spring.

Enjoy the reading.

A short treat. Writer and teacher Jan Woolf gives us a sneak peek of her April 7-11 Jump-start Your Writing course and her thoughts on the pleasures and perils of the writing life.

Enjoy and thanks for listening.

We are delighted to share with you a recording of Emma Sweeney reading from her forthcoming novel My Broken Twin. It is about the relationship between twin sisters, one of whom is disabled. We hope you enjoy this short excerpt from this beautifully written, powerful novel.

Emma joins us at Circle of Misse April 12-18, 2010 to lead a Get Writing! Boot Camp.

Her teaching and writing career has taken her as far a field as South East Asia, Japan and India. She lectures in Creative Writing at New York University - London, and at the Open University.

Emma has won various prizes for her writing including an Arts Council Award and a Royal Literary Fund Bursary. She was also a recent Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence, and has been short-listed for various prestigious awards including the David Wong Fellowship, the International Fish Prize and the Asham Award (Britain’s foremost short story prize for women writers).

Some exciting news from London about Circle of Misse course leader Jan Woolf. Lambeth council (a borough of London) selected her organization, Rootball Writers, to produce a writing workshop for teenagers inspired by the Ballet Rambert dance archive called “Dancing on Paper”. Jan will partner with filmmaker Derek Ogbourne for the March 20-21 event which will produce new writing for Lambeth's submission to the national lottery funded "Big Dance" project.

A special treat on this episode. Award winning poet Meryl Pugh reads her new poem "The Charcoal Bridle" due to appear in The Rialto this spring. She also discusses her influences, including the power of nature, and we explore the concept of "poetic territory" and what it means to the beginning writer.

Meryl leads "Creativity Jumpstart: Seeing With A Poet’s Eye" and "Poetry Boot Camp: Discovering New Territory" at Circle of Misse in July.

Meryl is a Jerwood/Arvon Young Poet, was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and short-listed for the New Writing Ventures Poetry Prize. She has led writing workshops in museums, schools and prisons and was selected to participate in both the Jerwood/Aldeburgh Seminar, “To and From a First Collection” and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Masterclass in 2009. Her work has appeared in the anthologies: Entering the Tapestry (ed.s Mimi Khalvati and Graham Fawcett, 2003, Enitharmon) and Reactions 5 (ed. Clare Pollard, 2005, Pen and Ink Press). Reviews and poems have been published in various magazines, including the Guardian and most recently New Welsh Review and Poetry Review. A pamphlet collection, Relinquish, was published in 2007 by Arrowhead Press.

As always, if you like our theme music, it's called Acclimate from the album Cool Aberrations by General Fuzz. You can download it at www.magnatune.com

Enjoy the podcast. Thanks for listening.

Writer and teacher Emma Sweeney and I talk about what it's like, especially for the beginning writer, to garner the courage and support to embark on a long writing project. Drawing from her own creative process and experiences teaching students at NYU and the Open University, Emma sheds some light on what actually happens during writing courses and why they are so useful. 

Emma offers advice that is applicable for those considering longer creative writing courses, such as an MA, as well as those considering a shorter course like the week-long Get Writing! Boot Camp she will lead at Circle of Misse 12-18 April, 2010. For those interested in that course, Emma offers some specific details of what she has planned and her ideas and inspirations for the week.

As always, if you like our theme music, it's called Acclimate from the album Cool Aberrations by General Fuzz. You can download it at www.magnatune.com

Enjoy the podcast. Thanks for listening.

Great interview with Observer journalist and novelist Paul Harris on Media Bistro where he talks about the experience of writing his first novel The Secret Keeper and life as a war correspondent.

Paul leads a novel writing course at Circle of Misse 20-26 Sept. 2010.

Playwright, short story writer and writing teacher Jan Woolf took a break from her writer's retreat at Circle of Misse last August to join me under the arbour in the garden to discuss her forthcoming short story collection Fugues on A Funny Bone from Muswell Press and what inspires her to write.

Jan Woolf is the Harold Pinter writer-in-residence at the Hackney Empire, where her play Porn Crackers (about her past job as a film censor) was produced last year. Her fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Libbon, and her short story “Moving On” was short-listed for the Asham Award. She leads the ‘Writing the Visual’ workshops at the Hackney Empire, for writers whose fiction engages with the visual arts.

Jan returns to Circle of Misse in April to kick off the 2010 season of writing, cooking and painting holidays with a five-day course designed to jumpstart the creative process and get people writing.

If you like our theme music, it's called Acclimate from the album Cool Aberrations by General Fuzz. You can download it at www.magnatune.com

Enjoy the podcast. Thanks for listening.