Our inaugural Finding Your Voice online writing course begins in January 2022, and we're working with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to make two free places available.
The course, targeted at helping new writers build their confidence and explore their personality on the page, will be led by top creative tutors Natalie Young and Alex Hammond. It is suitable for writers of fiction and creative non-fiction, and no previous formal writing experience is required to sign up. Further course information and booking details
Meanwhile, the Find Your Voice writing competition is free to enter and provides writers either born or resident in Northern Ireland with the opportunity to win one of two places on the course. Entries will be judged by award winning writer and the Arts Council’s Acting Head of Literature Paul McVeigh, who said:
“This course is a brilliant opportunity to learn some new skills that will really help to elevate your writing and also gain insight into the publishing world. We are delighted to be working with Bloomsbury Publishing and the organisation Writers and Artists, who produce the industry bible, the ‘Writers and Artists Yearbook’. This offer of two free course places for writers from or based in Northern Ireland really is an exceptional opportunity to benefit from the experience and knowledge of first-class tutors. The Arts Council wants to help all writers develop their careers, and in particular, this opportunity allows us to support those at the very early stages of their writing life. We are accepting entries across all genres and I’m very much looking forward to reading the submissions.”
To enter the Find Your Voice Competition, you must send either 1000 words of original fiction, creative non-fiction, or 10-15 lines of poetry. Your submission could be something in development or a piece that shows your writing at its best. Full entry details here
Judge
Paul McVeigh recently edited The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, a collection that brought together 16 published writers and 16 new voices to write about their experience of being working class in Ireland. His novel The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Prize and he is twice winner of The McCrea Literary Award. He wrote plays and comedy, with his shows touring the UK and Ireland including the Edinburgh Festival and London's West End. His short stories have appeared in The Irish Times, Faber's Being Various and Kit de Waal's Common People anthologies, on BBC Radio 3, 4 & 5 and Sky Arts. Paul was fiction editor at the Southword Journal, co-edited the Belfast Stories anthology and co-founded the London Short Story Festival.
About the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Both assisted places made available by the Find Your Voice competition have been arranged in partnership with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is the lead funding and development agency for the Arts providing support to arts projects throughout the region, through its Treasury and National Lottery funds. Arts Council funding enables artists and arts organisations to increase access to the arts across society and deliver great art that is within everyone’s reach.
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