Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings

Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings provides a complete creative writing course: from ways to jump-start your writing and inspire your creativity, right through to presenting your work to agents and publishers.

It covers the genres of fiction, poetry and life writing (including autobiography, biography and travel writing), combining discussions of technique with readings and exercises to guide you step by step towards becoming more adept at creative writing.

The second edition has been updated and in large part newly written, with readings by a diverse group of contemporary authors displaying a variety of styles and approaches. Each chapter also features an array of inspiring writing exercises, enabling you to experiment with different methods and discover your strengths. Above all, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings will help you to develop your abilities while nurturing your individual voice as a writer.

Sally O’Reilly has taught at The Open University, Brunel University and the University of Portsmouth, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Brunel University. Her publications include Dark Aemilia (Myriad Editions/Picador US, 2014), which was nominated for the Kirkus Reviews Fiction prize in the US, and How to be a Writer (Piatkus, 2011). She has been shortlisted for the Ian St James short story award and the Cosmopolitan short story prize. She also writes for the Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Conversation, the Evening Standard and New Scientist.

Jane Yeh holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard University, the University of Iowa, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Her publications include Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward and Aldeburgh poetry prizes, and Discipline (Carcanet, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. She has been a mentor for the Ledbury Poetry Critics programme and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University.