A weekend writing course open to everyone who needs a safe space to explore queer themes and queer characters. The course will focus on stories focused on bodies and practices that may go misunderstood in more mainstream workshop spaces, such as sex-positive/kink themes, or stories around trans characters. Spread over two days, the workshop will build a cohort effect among its participants, and build lasting connections between some of them and the facilitator who has a track record of developing queer writers.

The course will involve writing and sharing. It will develop those with a writing practice and introduce key concepts to those who wish to try creative writing for the first time.

This is a weekend course over two days — please only join if you can attend both days.

Workshop facilitator Olumide Popoola has published essays, poetry, a novella, a short story collection, and a play. Her critically acclaimed novel When We Speak of Nothing was published by Cassava Republic Press in 2017.

She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and curated Berlin’s (Germany) inaugural international African Bookfest, Writing in Migration (2018). She is the creator and leader of the Arts Council funded scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ writers, ‘The Future is Back’. In 2019 Scottish writer Jackie Kay named her one of ten notable Black and Brown writers in Britain.

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. www.artscouncil.org.uk