WRITING COURSES IN 2012
We are pleased to comfirm the return of Anne Aylor in 2012.
SoYou Want To Write A Novel
Friday 8th - 15th June 2012
WHAT kind of novelist are you? What sort of book do you dream of writing? Have you found your subject matter? If you have not written before, how do you begin? This 7-day novel retreat held in collaboration with 7 Day Wonder will consist of morning workshops, one-to-one tutorials and readings that will give you the confidence to develop your manuscript. During this novel writing intensive, material normally covered in 6 weeks will be covered in 6 days.
Level: Beginners to published writers
Cost: £845 ("Early Bird" fee) / £895 after 14 February 2012
Sessions will include:
• six 2.5 hour morning workshops, covering topics including "Getting Started", "Characterisation", "Point of View", "Setting", "Plotting" and "Editing"
• one-to-one tutorials to help students begin, shape or edit their material
• techniques to start writing/develop a novel already in progress
• advice on how to arrange and expand your material
• a chance to create new work that feeds into your manuscript
• the opportunity to have your writing read and discussed
• Open Mic nights for those who wish to have their work critiqued
Please email for further details.
Or visit: http://www.anneaylor.co.uk/NovelWritingInSpain
Write Now! Retreat in Catalonia
17 - 23 June 2011, Camós, Spain
Date: Friday, 17 June - Thursday, 23 June 2011
Length of course: 6 days
Level: Beginners to published writers
Cost: £795 (single room, no supplement)
La Torre de Dalt offers a unique, inspiring environment for you to focus on your writing, discover your ‘voice’ and spend time in the company of others who have a passion for writing. You don’t need to be a ‘writer’ to come. One-to-one tutorials and group discussions will be offered daily for those who choose to have them. During this retreat, you’ll be free to use the time in a way that is most beneficial to you.
In the hills above Girona, you can develop a work in progress or start one that needs time to get from head to paper.
The retreat will include:
• one-to-one tutorials to begin, shape or edit material
• time to start writing/develop a novel, memoir, short story, stage play or film script
• advice on how to arrange, expand and improve your material
• a chance to revise or create new work
• the opportunity to have writing read and constructively critiqued
The serene surroundings of La Torre de Dalt offer time for writing, relaxation and recreation. There is a new swimming pool on the grounds, exclusively for the use of course members.
Early bird reduced course fee
If you pay your deposit by midnight on 14 February, you are eligible for a reduced fee of £754 for being an “early bird”.
Location
The course will take place in the village of Camós in the Girona Province of Catalonia. La Torre de Dalt is a beautifully renovated 17th-century stone farmhouse surrounded by olive trees, pine and oak forests. Girona and the medieval town of Besalú are 20 minutes by car.
Accomodation
There are 11 en suite single rooms. Two double rooms (2 sharing, not en suite) will become available once all singles have been booked. Click for images of La Torre de dalt
Food
In addition to omnivores, we cater for vegetarians, vegans and those on dairy- and gluten-free diets. Please provide us with information on any special dietary requirements when booking.
Recreation
You can read, swim, relax, take a siesta or an inspiring walk to Banyoles Lake which is 45 minutes away.
Level
The retreat will be open to anyone with a serious desire to write, from complete beginners to published writers. You need not be working on a piece of writing to enrol. Tutorial and group sessions will be conducted in a friendly, constructive atmosphere which will help you develop, plan and expand your work.
What you'll need
Bound notebook, pen & a spare. Clipboard. Photocopies if reading on showcase evenings.
Tutorials
All group and private tutorials are voluntary. Anyone wishing to use the time to write will be free to do so.
Showcase sessions
On most evenings there will be the opportunity to share prepared work. Word limit: 1300 per session. For best feedback, you will need to provide copies which will be returned to you.
Further information
There are videos & photos of previous courses on Ann’s website - as well as further information: see:
http://www.anneaylor.co.uk/WriteNowRetreatInCatalonia.htm
How to get there
Flights: RyanAir fly to Girona. Click here for the Ryanair link. Train: Camós is accessible by Eurostar/TGV to Perpignan, then by Spanish train from Perpignan to Girona. A taxi or bus can then be taken to Banyoles which is 4 kilometres from Camós.
Global warming
7 Day Wonder aims to be a low-impact business in terms of the environment, recycling where possible, using local services and produce.
Do I need a VISA
If you are a passport holder from a country outside the EU, you will need to check if a visa is necessary to enter Spain. Students are responsible for obtaining any visas, or other travel documents, necessary to enter the country. If this applies to you, click here for further information. You are advised to travel with a passport which has a minimum of 6 month left before its expiry.
Students will be responsible for transport to/from Camós. Bus: There is a bus from Girona Airport to Girona where you transfer for a bus to Banyoles. Taxi: A taxi costs approximately €40 from the airport to Camós.If several students are arriving around the same time, a taxi can be shared.
Arrival time
Officially it’s 5.00PM on Friday, 17 June. However, depending on the activities of the previous week, we may be able to get access earlier in the afternoon, but if you can, aim for arriving in Camós by 17.00.
What is included
• 6 nights’ accommodation in a single en suite room
• Breakfast, lunch and 3-course dinner, inclusive of wine
• Course fee for tutorials and showcase sessions
Not included
• Flights or rail travel to/from Spain
• Ground travel within Spain
• Personal travel insurance
LEAVING LA TORRE DE DALT
The course will end at approximately 11.00AM
About Ann
Anne Aylor is a professional writer and teacher. She has had short stories and poems published by the Arts Council of Great Britain, The Literary Review, London Magazine, Fiction Magazine, Stand Magazine and broadcast on BBC Radios 3 and 4. In 2008 her short story, “The Speed of Dark”, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the biggest open creative writing competition in the English language.
No Angel Hotel, her first novel, was published in the UK by HarperCollins and Grafton Book and by St Martin’s Press, New York (US title: Angel Hotel). For an archive review of Angel Hotel in the Pittsburgh Press, clickhere. She has recently completed her second novel, The Double Happiness Company, which will be published in January 2011 by BareBone Books. She is currently working on her third (working title: The Speed of Dark).
She has won or been a runner-up in a number of competitions, including the BBC Radio 3 Short Story Competition, Stand Magazine Short Story Competition, the Dixon Ward Short Story Competition and the 2005 Good Houskeeping Short Story Competiion, judges: Alexander McCall Smith, Julie Meyerson, Lindsay Nicholson, Ali Gunn (Curtis Brown) and Kate Elton (Editor-in-Chief, Random House). In 2008 her short story, “The Speed of Dark”, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
Her stage play, Children of the Dust, won the 1987 International Playwriting Festival competition and was co-produced by the Soho Theatre and the Theatre Warehouse, Croydon. Her short play, The M & M Café was commissioned and published by the Oxford University Press. Her stage play, Happiness Is North of Here, had a rehearsed reading at the Gate Theatre, London.
The Trainer, a new play by David Wilson and Anne Aylor, had a rehearsed reading at Oxford House in March 2009 with Tim Pigott-Smith. It was later performed in Two Plays for Gaza at the Hackney Empire, London, in May 2009 along with Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children. This bridge-building evening for peace in the Middle East was a benefit in aid of the Gaza Music School and starred Corin Redgrave, Roger Lloyd Pack,Jana Zeineddine and Paul Herzberg. For Guy Smallman’s slideshow of The Trainer, click here.
Anne was a shortlist judge in the 2007 Wimbledon Book Fest (Sandi Toksvig Writing Challenge) and has given teleseminars and weekend courses at Alternatives, St James Church, Piccadilly. in 2010 she was asked to lead a writing masterclass at the Redbridge Book and Media Festival. She taught playwriting at the City Lit, London, and has taught at Morley College for over twenty years. She loves to write because it doesn’t involve high maths or high heels.
Reviews of "No Angel Hotel
‘Anne Aylor’s Angel Hotel was published in Great Britain as No Angel Hotel. Make of that what you will, but the first novel is a finely crafted and very moving exploration of the youthful pain and the lasting passion of love.
Writing in prose that is sometimes breathless, sometimes poised and straining for rationality, Aylor tells the tale of young Elkie, a working-class girl from Northern Ireland, and her affair with a sophisticated intellectual, Ivan, “like Count Vronsky with dark hair”. At the beginning, Ivan’s interest is casual and self-indulgent, but Elkie, misunderstanding and faithful, in love, wants to go off with him. In a moment of frustration, Ivan agrees. What follows is a series of drab rented rooms, brief visits, a fading hope of marriage, a dozen years of nothing but occasional postcards, and then, in the midst of new maturity, a final, fateful postcard. Aylor’s sensitive writing, in all it moods, makes this otherwise ordinary love story into a quiet reflection on the fragility of human feelings, a reflection that almost inevitably, she suggests, leaves us with a lump in the throat.’
Washington Post Book World
‘The multi-talented Anne Aylor (she is also a professional dancer) has produced a first novel, No Angel Hotel, of spellbinding intensity. It records the obsessive love of a beautiful but naive Irish village girl for the worldly heir to the surrounding estate. He takes her to London. In a squalid boarding-house her days narrow to encompass only his less and less frequent visits. Finally he leaves, though for 13 years postcards arrive for her waiting still at the same address. Written in brief, ephemeral passages as if a more prolonged focus would scorch the page, this is an exhilarating first novel." Yorkshire Post