Here our focus is on finding a language, style and voice for your writing about health and illness that best reflects your story. How might you capture living with an illness, being disabled, or providing care using words that adequately reflect the complexity of your experience?
We’ll consider the taboo and stigma of illness, and the expressive potential of creative writing as a corrective to prejudice and ignorance. We will also explore texts that write beyond the simple binaries of being well and unwell, life and death, fighter or victim. In this workshop, reclaim your voice. Begin testing out what you have to say, and experiment with new metaphors and motifs to do justice to the vastness of your story.
Course outline
- A two-hour live zoom workshop with writer and coach, Andrew Kaye Kauffmann, including a combination of reading, discussion and writing exercises
- Reading material provided outside of the Zoom session
- Resources on telling your story within safe boundaries
- Content rooted in the social model of disability, open to people with health and care needs, and those who provide care
Paced to be a comfortable writing experience, suited to writers of all levels. There will be a short comfort break. There is no expectation to be on camera, if you don’t feel comfortable appearing on camera.
Series of Workshops
This is the second worksop in a series of three Live Online events. They are designed to work as a series, with a successive series of writing exercises to engage with to help develop your story. All ticket types can be found here:
Combination Ticket: Having our voice heard: writing our health and care stories| £75 | All Three Workshops Listed Below
Workshop 1: Your health and care experience: writing what´s within| £30 | Saturday 27th April | 2pm – 4pm, UK Time GMT / UTC
Workshop 2: Finding the right language: health and illness as metaphors| £30 | Saturday 11th May | 2pm – 4pm, UK Time GMT / UTC
Workshop 3: Lay bare the experience? Choosing your perspective on writing a challenging story| £30 | Saturday 25th May | 2pm – 4pm, UK Time BST / UTC+
Learning online
These workshops will take place on Zoom, so you will need to have access to the internet at the times given above. The course tutor will share Zoom links for each session via email.
Discounted Spots
If you would like to purchase tickets for these events individually, each event has four half price places and two free place available on a first come first served basis. Please email ennis@londonlitlab.co.uk to let us know if you would like one of these spots. Please note, you can only have one discounted place across all three events.
