Writing about London

“Writing About London” is a course with elements of seminar, lecture, and workshop in which you will explore the city in four ways: reading about London, in a variety of genres; writing about London, with an emphasis on craft; visiting London sites; and getting to know one Londoner with an interesting occupation.

We’ll ask such questions as: Can a place be presented not only as setting but as character? If so, in different works, what kind of character is London (hero, lover, villain, annoying relative)? As writers, how do we create atmosphere? How can multisensory description bring the reader into our experience? Why do certain places stay with us? What does our relationship with a place say about us?

In the first half of the course, you will write short personal essays about your experience of London. Then, because the best way to get to know a place is through the people who live and work there, the second half of the course will be devoted to profiling a Londoner found in the online Yellow Pages (Yell.com)—for instance, the owner of a kebab shop, a secondhand bookseller, or a hydrographic surveyor of the River Thames. You’ll critique and support each other’s writing in weekly workshops.

Our readings will include fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Nuruddin Farah, Albino Ochero-Okello, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Sukhdev Sandhu, Zadie Smith, and Virginia Woolf will be among our authors.