What’s on

Our popular Writing Conference is coming to the Tees Valley for the first time! Join us at Darlington Hippodrome on Sunday 17 May for a jam-packed day of panels, breakout sessions and practical workshops for writers at all stages of their careers. Featured speakers include Dame Pat Barker and Paddy Crewe, plus a range of professional authors, agents and editors.

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Durham Writes offers County Durham residents the opportunity to develop their poetry skills, from complete beginners who want to have a go, to people who want to make writing a career. Attend a free workshop in community centres across the county, or apply for a six-week masterclass course which includes mentoring and industry insights.

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This six month development programme supports early career writers and creatives of any age living in the North East to develop their practice through training, mentoring, networking and bursaries.

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Two writers and creatives living in the North East will undergo a six-month residency, receiving bursaries, support and mentoring to develop their artistic practice. We are also recruiting a Screenwriters in Residence in partnership with Tyneside Cinema, and a Writer in Residence in partnership with Live Theatre.

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With our hosts Northumbria University, we will be celebrating our flagship awards programme and announcing this year’s winners, who are some of the region’s most exciting poets, novelists, children’s writers and authors of narrative non-fiction. The awards recognise exceptional work-in-progress by writers in the North.

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Significant Ink is a writer development programme for writers of colour in the North East. In June and July we are running a series of free fiction and life writing workshops in venues across Newcastle upon Tyne for early career writers of colour. Then from 10 June–16 July, applications will open for a programme of mentoring, bursaries and support.

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Playwrights who are interested in developing their work for the screen can come and learn from TV writers and industry professionals. We’ll discuss the commonalities and differences that exist between writing for the stage and the screen and offer advice on how most effectively to navigate those transitions. You will have a chance to meet other writers and to put your questions to industry experts.

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This event is aimed at early career TV screenwriters who are working on their first scripts and need advice about next steps. Writers, producers and broadcasting professionals will share their thoughts on how to bring their spec scripts to fruition, how to write treatments and what writers need to do to form connections and build their profiles.

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Four writers from any creative background, living in the North East, will be supported to adapt their own work and develop their screenwriting skills. They will receive 1-2-1 script development support, workshops, and the opportunity to have their work read through with actors at an industry feedback session.

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These awards offer a £3000 bursary, bespoke one-to-one mentoring, a long-term placement with a leading production company, and group workshops with industry professionals, to emerging TV writers living anywhere in the North of England.

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Award-winning television writer, creator and exec producer Barbara Slade will lead this fun, yet intensive two day workshop covering all the elements of what it takes to write for children’s TV. Participants will be led through a step-by-step process to build their skills as a writer and learn how to succeed in today’s exciting and ever-growing children’s television industry.

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Celebrate the new novel from Douglas Stuart, the Booker-Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo. John of John is a tender and unflinching exploration of masculinity, sexuality and the silent struggle of unspoken desires in a controlling Presbyterian community on the Isle of Harris. Douglas will be in conversation with bestselling Scottish crime author Val McDermid.

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Northern Bookshelf Live connects some of our region’s best writers with libraries and readers across the North of England. This year, authors Brian Groom, Marcia Hutchinson, Sheena Kalayil, Sarah Mellor, Sally O’Reilly, Caroline Roberts, Robert Rutherford and Daniel Tawse are heading to libraries across the North to share stories of migration, queer coming of age, a history of the British Isles and thrilling crime fiction.

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Join us to launch the debut novel from Louise Powell, Northern Writers’ Award-winner and working-class writer from Middlesbrough. Underdogs is a love letter to a disappearing community; in County Durham in 1998, where the pits have closed and conventional work is scarce, ten-year-old George and his dad Reg become involved in the larger-than-life world of underground greyhound racing, also known as ‘flapping’.

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The Deborah Rogers Foundation is offering two paid six-week publishing internships in London, open exclusively to people in the North. The programme offers an entry-level introduction to rights and agenting in publishing companies and literary agencies, and accommodation is provided if needed.

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With Newcastle Hospitals Charity, we’re recruiting volunteers in the North East to make a difference by bring stories to life and reading with hospital patients at the Freeman Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Volunteers will receive bespoke training and be supported to begin volunteering on selected wards.

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In partnership with leading publisher Hachette UK, we’re inviting Key Stage 4 and 5 students to come to Northumbria University for a day of talks and workshops with publishing professionals to learn more about potential careers in writing and publishing.

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We’re inviting five young people from County Durham to programme and run their very own event for Durham Book Festival in October. The programme will involve industry-based masterclasses and a workshop day in Durham to plan your festival event and learn about careers in the arts and events planning.

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Aged 18-30? Have a short form piece of writing that hasn’t been published before? Submit your work for the third edition of Scraps, the annual anthology written, edited and produced by young writers in our First Edition group.

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11-19 year olds in the North East can join us this summer to work alongside a professional film maker, writing and making a film which lets the world know how you would make this the ultimate place for young people to live.

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