In this generative workshop on fantasy poetry, we will explore using other worlds to inspire our poetry, bring magic into the everyday and have a go at persona poetry (writing from a different character's perspective). This will be a chance to try out different ways of approaching fantasy in poetry as well as looking at some different poems to provide inspiration. All the exercises will be a jumping off point for an area of poetry that isn't always acknowledged or explored, and a fun chance to get fantastical in a relaxed setting!

This workshop is for people with any level of writing experience - whether you've written lots or whether you have never written at all! There will be a break in the workshop and the workshop will be auto-captioned. 

Your Workshop Leader
Elspeth Wilson is a writer and poet who is interested in exploring the limitations and possibilities of the body through writing, as well as writing about joy and happiness from a marginalised perspective. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Too Hot to Sleep, is published by Written Off Publishing and was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s 2023 Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, is forthcoming with Simon and Schuster in 2025. She can usually be found in or near the sea.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

 Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.

For as long as humans have existed, they have asked: What if? But what is it that compels writers to imagine the future?

This event will be chaired by Erin Hardee.

About the event

Running time: 55 minutes followed by a book signing

Venue: Pleasance Theatre

Price: £11/£8 concession - In Person - or £5.50 Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)

This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.

A recording of this event will be available to catch-up on our YouTube until Sunday 14th July 2024. Ticket holders and weekend pass owners will receive the catch-up link automatically after the festival. Please keep an eye on your SPAM.

Find out more about ACCESS to our events here, and for information about TICKETS, click here.

Any other questions? Check out our FAQ.

From our first encounters with creative writing in school, we're told that writing is a serious business. There are rules to be learned, techniques to be mastered, conventions to be followed. If we want to succeed, we have to put away childish things and 'take ourselves seriously' as writers. But what gets lost along the way is often what brought us to writing in the first place: a sense of enjoyment in telling a good story, and the fun of creating new characters and new worlds.

This workshop will consider what happens when we put elements of play back into our writing process, and the ways it can energise and elevate our stories. We'll look at how play is a vital element of storytelling that is too often ignored, and how breaking the rules, or subverting the conventions, often leads to a more interesting piece of writing. We'll also explore some techniques for introducing the experimental and random into our work, swapping the writer's toolbox for a toybox - and hopefully having some fun along the way.

Your Workshop Leader

Dan Coxon is an award-winning editor and writer based in London. He has been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards and the British Fantasy Awards (six times), with Writing the Uncanny (co-edited with Richard V. Hirst) winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction 2022. His anthology Being Dad won a Saboteur Award in 2016. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Shakespeare Unleashed, Beyond the Veil, Fiends in the Furrows III and Great British Horror 7: Major Arcana. His latest fiction anthology - Isolation - was published by Titan Books in September 2022. The second book in the Writing series, Writing the Future, was published in September 2023, and the third, Writing The Murder, is forthcoming in 2024.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Braid Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

… (some of) your questions answered  

Getting as far as thinking about an edit is a huge achievement. But what is an edit? You may hear words like Developmental, Structural, Copyediting, Line editing, Proofreading … are they all the same thing, with varying degrees of scary-sounding names? And do you need to work with an editor to do all, some or any of them? If so, how does that work? 

Helen will introduce the different types of editing, and you’ll look at some (invented!) examples to assess what kind of work they might benefit from. You’ll have the chance to experiment with developmental and line editing yourself, and discuss your thoughts. The workshop rounds off with a look at how you can work with an editor to help make your work (even) better.  

Editing is a hugely rewarding part of the writing process, and your editor is there only to help you – come along to find out how! 

Your Workshop Leader

Helen is a freelance editor who has worked in the publishing industry since the early 1990s (starting out as an editorial assistant and working up through typesetting, production and project management to managing editor at Edinburgh publisher Canongate). Freelance since 2008, she has also worked as digital resource creator for museums, and delighted in doing the MLitt in Fantasy at Glasgow (2015–17). She mentors beginning writers and could talk endlessly about publishing and editing … and pretty much anything else!

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Cheviot Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Whether you’re writing a brawl in a saloon, transporting readers to an underground fight club, or designing the martial art of an ancient alien race, this workshop will help you write convincing and compelling fight scenes. This workshop is relevant for writers of any level and genre, from established novelists to those who want to write their first ever fight scene.

By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:

• Understand and convey the influences of character on fighting style

• Use setting to inform the creation of fictional fights

• Write believable and compelling fighting techniques and strategies

• Understand and convey the thoughts and emotions of those involved in fighting

• Assign believable fight injuries and damage outcomes to their characters

• Avoid common misconceptions and mistakes that can break the reader's immersion

Your Workshop Leader

Josh Holton is a writer and a fighter with more than a decade of experience in mixed martial arts and street fighting. He has studied and coached in a variety of martial arts and has befriended and fought fighters from all over the world. His writing has been published in numerous lit mags, anthologies, and podcasts, and he placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize, Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize, and the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize. Find him on X @JHoltonWriter

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

 Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.

Unfortunately this workshop has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience cause.

Please note the performance of Dune The Musical! is going ahead so make sure to see that!

Where do songs come from? Where do they go? Can anyone tell me? Does anyone know?

Join singer-songwriter Dan Collins for an in-depth workshop on the mysterious art of songwriting with particular reference to the music of Science-Fiction.
During the 90 minute session we will discuss techniques that you can use in your creative practice and examine songs written by Dan for his hit show Dune! The Musical.

This workshop is open to anyone who is musically inclined; whether you are a beginner or an old hand, everyone wants to write better songs and by the end of the class your head will be full of ideas and inspiration.

Your Workshop Leader

Dan Collins is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, comedian, playwright and clown. At last year's Cymera festival he debuted his one-man show Dune! The Musical which retells the titular sci-fi classic with the aid of 15 original songs which borrow from a number of influences and genres. 

His repertoire includes ballads, anthems, ditties and bops, and he is most at home behind a short-scale guitar and almost always uses standard tuning.

Drawing elaborate maps to support your world-building, novels, or games can be daunting. We can all scribble some wobbly lines and claim it’s a continent. And we can all scrawl HERE BE MOUNTAINS and hope for the best. But taking these ‘sketches’ and turning them into a thing of beauty is something quite different. Indeed, for most, it seems impossible.

Andy Law, professional cartographer, intends to prove that assumption incorrect.

This workshop, targeted at beginners and professionals alike, will take you step-by-step through creating your own fantasy maps. Using an easy-to-follow process, Andy will show you how to create cartographical wonders that will never fail to impress.

Your Workshop Leader

Andy Law has been professionally mapping fan-favourite settings for over two decades. He has worked for many companies including Critical Role, Games Workshop, and Penguin Random House. He has contributed to settings including Game of Thrones, Tal'Dorei, Dragon Age, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, and Thunderbirds. Andy is also an award-winning games designer and writer, and he streams online weekly about world-building and games. He lives in Edinburgh with his gaming family, where he works for Rookery Publications, a games company he co-owns with some of the best people in the world.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Cheviot Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Agent Caro Clarke breaks down how to craft a query letter and make your submission shine.

They will go through what information to include, how to catch an agent's attention and some of the Do's and Don't's to help you on your road to pitching your writing to agents and publishers.

Your Workshop Leader

Caro Clarke is a literary agent with over thirteen years' experience in publishing – at Transworld (PRH) and at Canongate Books as a Senior Rights Manager. They were named Rights Professional of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021. In 2019, they co-founded the Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented nature writers, which kickstarted a passion to demystify the publishing industry and help emerging writers to develop their craft and build their writing careers. Portobello Literary was established in 2022 to build on that work.

Writers they have worked with have won or been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Saltire National Book Awards, Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, Forward Prize, Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour, Mo Siewcharran Prize, Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, Northern Writers Award, Nan Shepherd Prize, Laurel Prize, Nature Chronicles Prize, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Women in Journalism Georgina Henry award, SI Leeds Literary Award and the Frank Allen Bullock Creative Writing Prize.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

 Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.

Join podcasters Marco Rinaldi and Tariq Ashkanani for a live recording of their writing podcast, Page One – with a special guest yet to be revealed.

On Page One - The Writer’s Podcast, Marco and Tariq talk to writers of all kinds, from bestselling authors to screenwriters to comic writers to learn about how they go about creating their stories.

Don't miss a deep dive into each guest’s writing history, including how they broke into the industry, their writing process and an exploration of their work. There might even be a sneak peek of upcoming projects!

The #Cymera2024 guest has not been revealed yet, so watch this space.

Venue: Lomond Room

Free but ticketed.

This event is in person.

Do you have a fresh piece of writing ready for the world to see? Then we want your reading! Poetry, a bit of a novel or short fiction, we love it all!

Readings should be no longer than five minutes

There will be two in-person open mic session over the festival weekend.

The Open Mic will take place in the Pleasance Bar at the following times

• Saturday 1st June 3pm to 3:30pm

• Sunday 2nd June 1:30pm to 2pm

To join us in person, please apply here

Submission deadline is Sunday 19th May 2024.

Venue: Pleasance Bar

Free, no ticket needed.

Historical fantasy combines what I see as the best parts of historical fiction and fantasy, but it is neither wholly one nor the other, and comes with a unique set of challenges. This worldbuilding workshop offers an in-depth and inspiring practical session for authors who seek guidance on how to integrate elements of both genres into their work.

The topics you will cover include:

•  Finding the right historical era for your story

•  Incorporating fantastical elements into well-known or recognisable settings

•  Using existing myth and folklore as inspiration

•  Beyond the desk: different methods of research

•  Writing inclusively within a historical context

•  How to build a believable atmosphere without resorting to archaic or anachronistic anguage

•  Finding story in the landscape

•  Engaging with contemporary issues in historical settings

This workshop takes the form of a presentation, making use of group discussion and active writing exercises to help put theory into practice. The aim is for participants to leave not only with new ideas, but a better understanding of how these genres can effectively and imaginatively intersect.

Your Workshop Leader

Lucy Holland is the author of The Times bestselling Sistersong, which was a finalist for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2022. Her second historical fantasy novel, Song of the Huntress, is published by Pan Macmillan in 2024. As Lucy Hounsom, she wrote the Worldmaker Trilogy. She worked twelve years in corporate account sales for Waterstones Booksellers before becoming a full-time author. Lucy co-hosts the intersectional feminist podcast ‘Breaking the Glass Slipper’, which won Best Audio in the 2019 British Fantasy Awards. She lives in Devon.

Follow Lucy on X, Bluesky and Instagram @silvanhistorian and on her Facebook page

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Braid Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Pictish symbols carved into rocks. Boats hewn from the trunks of trees. Amulets, crowns and gravestones. Come and use artefacts from our Scottish history to springboard ideas for a fantasy character or creature. I'll start us off with some silly drawing games, then give you prompts and skills to develop figures and stories from ancient objects. You'll sketch, draw and play throughout, finishing with a fantasy character of your own design.

Suitable for Adults, Teens. (12+)
All materials provided. Any skill level welcome!

Your Workshop Leader

Hannah Kelly is a fantasy writer & illustrator. In 2019 she won the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Prize for her speculative fiction and she is currently writing her YA Fantasy series for Victoria Hobbs at A.M.Heath. Arthur Rackham, Brian Froud and Alan Lee are her constant inspiration for worldbuilding. 

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Cheviot Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Agent Caro Clarke breaks down how to craft a query letter and make your submission shine.

They will go through what information to include, how to catch an agent's attention and some of the Do's and Don't's to help you on your road to pitching your writing to agents and publishers.

Your Workshop Leader

Caro Clarke is a literary agent with over thirteen years' experience in publishing – at Transworld (PRH) and at Canongate Books as a Senior Rights Manager. They were named Rights Professional of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021. In 2019, they co-founded the Nan Shepherd Prize for underrepresented nature writers, which kickstarted a passion to demystify the publishing industry and help emerging writers to develop their craft and build their writing careers. Portobello Literary was established in 2022 to build on that work.

Writers they have worked with have won or been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Saltire National Book Awards, Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, Forward Prize, Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour, Mo Siewcharran Prize, Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, Northern Writers Award, Nan Shepherd Prize, Laurel Prize, Nature Chronicles Prize, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Women in Journalism Georgina Henry award, SI Leeds Literary Award and the Frank Allen Bullock Creative Writing Prize.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Braid Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

This interactive craft workshop will explore effective charactersation in prose fiction. We'll look at point of view, dialogue, and character description, with a series of guided exercises (sharing optional). Learn about conversational rhythms and speech patterns, tips and tricks for crafting back-and-forths that are both naturalistic and propulsive, character building through dialogue and description, and how to write thumbnail character sketches that punch above their weight.

Your Workshop Leaders

MK Hardy is the pen name of author duo Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee. Together they write queer speculative fiction of all flavours. Their debut novel, gothic eco-horror THE NEEDFIRE, comes out from Solaris Books in 2025.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Cheviot Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Francesca Barbini of Luna Press hosts this informative workshop designed to help you develop the essential skills required to read, understand, and negotiate a publishing contract.

Your Workshop Leader

Francesca T Barbini was born and raised in Rome, Italy. After years of volunteer work around the world, she completed a MA Honour in Religious Studies at New College, Edinburgh, focusing on the Ancient Near East and the Dead Sea Scrolls, followed by a PGDE at Edinburgh University. In 2011, she began self-publishing her YA SF series Tijaran Tales, subsequently receiving a publication contract by American Oloris Publishing. In January 2015 she officially started Luna Press Publishing, home of speculative fiction in fiction and academia. In 2018 she won the British Fantasy Award for Non-Fiction, as Editor of Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction.

About the event:

 Running time: 60 minutes

Venue: Lomond Room

 Tickets: £10/ £8 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

Whether you’re writing a brawl in a saloon, transporting readers to an underground fight club, or designing the martial art of an ancient alien race, this workshop will help you write convincing and compelling fight scenes. This workshop is relevant for writers of any level and genre, from established novelists to those who want to write their first ever fight scene.

By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:

• Understand and convey the influences of character on fighting style

• Use setting to inform the creation of fictional fights

• Write believable and compelling fighting techniques and strategies

• Understand and convey the thoughts and emotions of those involved in fighting

• Assign believable fight injuries and damage outcomes to their characters

• Avoid common misconceptions and mistakes that can break the reader's immersion

Your Workshop Leader

Josh Holton is a writer and a fighter with more than a decade of experience in mixed martial arts and street fighting. He has studied and coached in a variety of martial arts and has befriended and fought fighters from all over the world. His writing has been published in numerous lit mags, anthologies, and podcasts, and he placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize, Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize, and the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize. Find him on X @JHoltonWriter

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Cheviot Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

This workshop invites you to delve into the perennially-popular ghost story. What defines the ghost story? Are there "rules" for ghost story writing? How do we create a genuinely chilling tale? What are the particular challenges when approaching either a short ghost story or a novel length work? And where can you get your ghost story published? Helen Grant examines these and other topics. The session will include hints and tips, discussions and some writing exercises with prompts. Please bring something to write with/on.  

Your Workshop Leader 

Helen Grant writes Gothic novels and short ghost stories. Joyce Carol Oates has described her as "a brilliant chronicler of the uncanny as only those who dwell in places of dripping, graylit beauty can be." A lifelong fan of the ghost story writer M.R.James, she has spoken at two M.R.James conferences and appeared at the Dublin Ghost Story Festival. Helen's most recent books are Too Near The Dead (2021) and Jump Cut (2023). She lives in Perthshire with her family, and when not writing, she likes to explore abandoned country houses and swim in freezing lochs.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

Venue: Braid Room

 Tickets: £18 / £15 (plus 50p booking fee)

 The event will be take place in person. Workshops are not recorded.

And how to use your brand on social media to connect with readers

This session will cover the essentials of author branding, book marketing, and using social media. Run by Anna Caig, a writer and marketing professional, the workshop will look at tools for exploring and pinning down your author brand, the version of you you’ll share with potential readers, in an authentic way which banishes the cringe.

We’ll also cover the practicalities of how to share your brand, and the content themes that come from this, on social media. As we know, ‘here’s my book, buy my book’ doesn’t cut it - so what can you talk about, and how can you create effective content?

We'll look at:

• How to develop an authentic personal brand which reflects your passions and inspirations, including the development of content themes (what to talk about on your social media and other marketing channels)

• An understanding of marketing strategy – a clear structure to follow to find readers who’ll love your work

• Support to find confidence in your marketing and banish the cringe factor

• Learn “what buttons to push” on social media: content creation practical tips and advice

Your Workshop Leader
Anna Caig trains creative people to do their own marketing. She works with The Society of Authors, Jericho Writers and The Literary Consultancy, as well as one-to-one with many writers. She’s worked in communications for over 20 years, specialising in media relations and strategic marketing campaigns, and is an experienced and engaging public speaker.
Anna also writes historical crime fiction and her debut novel was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger prize. She reviews books for The Sheffield Telegraph and on her blog.

The former Head of Communications at Sheffield City Council and tutor on The University of Sheffield MA Journalism course, Anna began her training business to support writers to build their brand and reach more readers. She now works with traditionally, indie and self-published writers, as well as helping creatives in any discipline find a wider audience.

Please note Sheila M. Averbuch is no longer able to co-run this workshop but it will go ahead as planned.

About the event:

 Running time: 105 minutes including breaks

 Tickets: £13 / £11 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be take place in Zoom meetings. Workshops are not recorded.

Do you have a fresh piece of writing ready for the world to see? Then we want your reading! Poetry, a bit of a novel or short fiction, we love it all!

There will be two in-person open mic session over the festival weekend.

Readings should be no longer than five minutes

The Open Mic will take place in the Pleasance Bar at the following times

• Saturday 1st June 3pm to 3:30pm

• Sunday 2nd June 1:30pm to 2pm

To join us in person, please apply here

Submission deadline is Sunday 19th May 2024.

Venue: Pleasance Bar

Free, no ticket needed.