Workshop: The First Ten Pages with Kit Fan

Agents and editors often say that the first ten pages determine the fate of a novel. But we’ve all given up on a book after a page or two, thinking that it’s not for us. What makes the first few pages of a novel so important? This workshop explores the myths and mechanics of a novel’s beginnings. We’ll discuss how to start, restart, and re-restart, and most importantly, how the art of keeping starting will lead us to the ending.

Kit Fan is a poet, novelist and critic, and the author of Diamond Hill. He has been the winner of numerous poetry prizes and was shortlisted twice for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize. He has won Northern Writers’ Awards for both fiction and poetry, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.