Alta’ir: Durham-Jordan Creative Collaboration
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Durham Book Festival invites proposals from writers to undertake a month-long writing residency in Amman.
Alta’ir is a partnership project between Durham Book Festival/New Writing North (co-founder), the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) (co-founder), St Mary’s College, Durham University (co-founder), and Dr. Fadia Faqir (initiator and co-founder), and the British Council.
We are looking for a published writer from the North of England, to spend up to four weeks in Amman on a paid residency in September 2018.
The residency will be an opportunity for a writer to develop their own creative work. It will provide a unique space for a published author from the North of England to reflect and to write and have the opportunity to share their work with Arab audiences. The residency will raise the profile of British writing in Jordan and the Arab world in the UK, in the hope that long-lasting connections between writers in the UK and the Arabic-speaking world are forged.
As part of the residency, CBRL’s British Institute in Amman will arrange events in and outside of Amman (some of which have parallels with the north of England) and introduce the chosen writer to places of interest in Jordan (including Petra).
During the four-week residency the writer will:
- Deliver writing workshops/readings that are made accessible to the general public
- Run workshops outside of Amman in hard to reach communities North and South of Jordan
- Deliver a discussion event around the work that the writer generates whilst in Jordan
- Provide 2-4 blogs for the Durham Book Festival about their visit and experiences
The chosen writer will discuss their visit to Jordan and the work it inspired, at an event at the Durham Book Festival on Sunday 14 October. This residency is part of a planned exchange with Jordan, which will see a Jordanian writer visiting the UK in October 2018.
Fee, Travel and Accommodation
Travel and visa costs will be covered by Durham Book Festival, who will also pay the writer a stipend of £800 (with an additional supplement of £200 for evening meals). Bed, breakfast and lunches will be provided by the British Institute in Amman for the duration of the visit.
What to send us:
- A statement (up to 500 words) explaining why you would like to undertake the residency and what you hope to achieve
- A recent CV
To be eligible to apply, writers must live and work in the North of England and have been previously published in the UK.
Applicants must have published at least one full-length work eg. a novel, creative non-fiction or a poetry or short story collection.
Durham Book Festival and New Writing North support Arts Council England’s Creative Case for Diversity and welcome applications from under-represented groups.
Deadline for applications is Thursday 14th June
If you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact Rebecca Wilkie [email protected]