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Susan is an acclaimed and inspiring creative writing tutor, with over twenty years’ experience of devising and facilitating writing courses and workshops, from half-day sessions to week-long residentials. She has run workshops in universities, schools, retirement homes, hospices, at Neolithic stone circles, on Welsh cliffs and Scottish mountains. She has coaxed poetry from children as young as three and from adults in their nineties.

Writing the Wild

Susan’s outdoor Writing the Wild workshops encourage participants to engage with their natural environment, wildlife and conservation issues, and our changing world, through writing.

She has run Writing the Wild workshops for numerous festivals, organisations and institutions, including the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the Fort William Mountain Festival, Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, Dark Mountain, Big Green Week, the Gatekeeper Trust, the Wild and Well Festival, the Department of Management at Bristol University and Suffolk Poetry Society.

Other wildlife/environment-focused projects for which Susan has run workshops include:

Susan also offers Writing the Wild as a one-to-one experience. If you’re interested either in treating yourself or buying an unusual Birthday gift for someone, just let her know.

Animal Language

In these innovative writing workshops themed around animal voices and language, participants practise deep listening and experiment with speaking seal, writing owl and translating fox into human!

Susan offered her first Animal Language workshop at the Do You Speak Seagull? festival in Brighton and has since run many more sessions throughout the UK.

Close-up of the faces of two Atlantic grey seals - a fluffy white pup, mouth open, squawking for food, and his/her sleepy mother.

University Teaching

Susan is a long-established university tutor of creative writing. In addition to her decade-long association with Cardiff University, she has run courses at Swansea, Bristol and Bath Spa Universities, and for the Open University, teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and adult continuing education students.

Testimonials

YogaWrite

YogaWrite workshops, co-devised and facilitated with yoga teacher and psychotherapist Kathryn Davies, encourage participants to connect with their authentic writing voice by using asanas (postures), breath work and meditation as a source of inspiration.

Susan sits cross-legged on the floor on a white sheet surrounded by big black cut-out letters.

Writing and Shamanism

Over a number of years, Susan co-led, with the late shamanic practitioner Sarah Howcroft, writing and shamanism workshops in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Under the guidance of Sarah and the beat of her drum, participants were invited to take imaginary journeys to explore, and meet their power animals in, the Upper and Lower Worlds of shamanic cosmology. With Susan’s support and inventive writing exercises, they then used these experiences to develop their poetry and prose in unexpected new ways.

Since Sarah’s untimely death, Susan has deeply missed her friendship and inspiration but continues to pursue her own training in shamanism and hopes to revive the workshops in some form at some stage.

Other Selected Writing Workshops

Literary Agent & Social Media