Sat, 14 Sept
|The Observer Building
WORKSHOP: Craig Jordan-Baker - Nature Writing Workshop
Noting, Noticing and Knowing: With a few new words, you can see nature differently. By paying closer attention to leaf, weed and bough, we can also pay closer attention to ourselves.
Time & Location
14 Sept 2024, 10:00 – 13:00
The Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Rd, Hastings TN34 1DT, UK
About The Event
Noticing the natural world is key to writing about it.
This three-hour workshop is about engaging with our immediate environment and deepening that engagement, in terms of both our senses and the many ways language and story ‘open up’ space.
We will focus on developing vocabularies of the natural world, and how, in doing this, we can come to see nature and natural spaces with more precision, nuance and wonder. Starting inside with some observational exercises, we will then take a walk around Cornwallis Gardens to test our knowledge and descriptive skills.
The workshop will allow some time for all participants to work on a short piece of writing, before being given the opportunity to share your words and insights with the group.
NB: There will be an opportunity for an outdoor element (weather permitting). However, if for any reason participants do not wish to go out there will be an alternative inside activity. If you have accessibility concerns please email info@hastingsbookfest.org
The Book Festival is offering a free bursary place to any local resident, who wishes to attend this workshop, but is struggling financially. To apply for this place, please email info@hastingsbookfestival.org
Biog: Craig Jordan-Baker is a working-class writer with an interest in language, natural history and psychogeography. He studied Creative Writing before going on to obtain a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sussex. His first novel The Nacullians is a non-linear narrative focussing on the lives of three-generations of a working-class Anglo-Irish family which the Irish Times called, 'a multi-layered treatise on memory and the stories we tell ourselves'. His second book If the River is Hidden is a non-fiction collaboration with Irish poet Cherry Smyth about their 2021 pilgrimage along the Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river. Most recently he is contributing co-editor of Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan). Craig is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton and regularly runs writing and foraging walks for a variety of organisations.