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:
- WWF: poetry workshops on the theme of renewable energy
- Friends of the Earth’s Bee Cause: workshops focusing on the importance of pollinators and the toxic impact of pesticide use
- the Marine Conservation Society’s 30 Threatened Species project
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.
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
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Susan Richardson is THE reason to come to Cardiff! She is a most excellent tutor of creative writing. The qualities that I most admire in her are warmth, fun, acceptance and the ability to be herself in the class – no hierarchy, yet still sharing of her huge experience – and her knack of intuitively guiding each student with sensitivity.
– Tess Sturrock
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Susan is an expert at devising exercises that stimulate ideas and bring out the best of what we have inside ourselves.
– J.B.
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I am a veteran of a number of creative writing courses, and have found Susan to be the best of the tutors I have encountered – by a long way. Susan’s approach is characterised by warmth and enthusiasm…Each member of the class feels valued.
– Jean Hare
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Susan’s writing course – a mind-stretching, brain-tweaking festival of words!
– Fiona Heaney
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Susan’s classes are an inspiration for anyone who wants to write. From the first class I attended I felt that I was achieving a higher standard of writing than I had ever thought possible.
– Kristina Taylor
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Susan Richardson is an absolute legend!
– M.P.
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.
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
- Six-year association with Disability Arts Cymru, offering workshops for disabled and deaf writers in Wales, with a selection of work published in the Hidden Dragons anthology (Parthian Books).
- Poetry workshops for refugees and asylum seekers on behalf of the The Welsh Refugee Council.
- Australia – workshops at the South Australian Writers’ Centre, Flinders University and the University of Adelaide, and at the International Drama and Education Festival in Brisbane.
- New Zealand – workshops focusing on how creative writing practices can be incorporated into the community health programme, with particular emphasis on eating behaviour and body image, in Auckland and Christchurch.
- Finland – workshops at the Universities of Helsinki, Turku and Tampere in association with the British Council.
- France – workshops at the British School of Paris.
- Ireland – travel writing workshop at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin.
