We are delighted to be working in partnership with Writing West Midlands. From its base in Digbeth, in Birmingham’s creative quarter, this agency is doing outstanding work developing and supporting writers of diverse levels of experience across the region.

The project writer in residence, Anna Lawrence Pietroni, and the PI will be co-designing and leading a short course with WWM at the Birmingham Midlands Institute in autumn 2019. The course draws on project research on George Eliot’s work to develop new writing about place and belonging in the Midlands now. You can register for a place on the course here.

How can our writing communicate a sense of home and belonging or bring to life a place that readers have never seen? This short course will offer writers based in the Midlands the opportunity to craft their skills in evoking settings – whether imagined, remembered, or the everyday. The course draws on the radical example of the nineteenth-century writer, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), born two hundred years ago in North Warwickshire, to explore what it means to write in or about the Midlands now. Works by course participants may be featured as part of the George Eliot bicentenary celebrations in 2019, with follow-on opportunities for publication. This course is designed for emerging writers who are looking to develop their work further.