A chance to take part in a fiction workshop taught by award-winning novelist and creative writing tutor Okechukwu Nzelu.
Setting can be one of the most crucial parts of fiction: it’s how your characters experience the world, and it can help make that world more convincing. But how can writers portray setting powerfully? Which aspects of it are most important? How do we convey the complexity of a whole world, without boring or alienating our readers?
In this workshop, we’ll use discussions, writing prompts and extracts from published work to explore all these questions, and help you develop the portrayal of setting in your own writing.
Dr Okechukwu Nzelu FRSL won a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North in 2015. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read and distributed to all staff and students at three universities. His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Diverse Book Awards.
He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a non-executive director of ALCS and CLA, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: info@huddlitfest.org.uk with your request.
