Sign up a quarter at a time for weekly writing sessions
The year is broken into quarterly teaching modules. Sign up for any quarter or join the quarters together to create a ½ year, ¾ year or even a full year of writing.
The 2025 first quarter begins Monday, 03 February.
What to expect in each quarter
Each quarter will focus thematically around a coherent set of lessons, so you can build your skills as a writer step by step.
Each quarter will consist of lessons week by week, starting with basic foundations and building layers of complexity.
Each quarter will include weekly assignments and feedback; discussion groups and peer review; recommended reading lists; edits and opportunities for re-drafts.
2025 quarterly programme
CHARACTER: First quarter, 03 February – 04 May 2025
- examining specific attributes, voice, dialogue, motivations, development and more; making your characters (fictional or real) come to life on the page
SETTING AND MOOD: Second quarter, 05 May – 03 August 2025
- exploring the physicality of setting, atmosphere, sensual details and tone in poetic phrasing and storytelling; building tension, suspense and humour
DETAILS AND CONCEPTS: Third quarter, 04 August – 02 November 2025
- starting small and working towards the bigger picture to build the world(s) you create, step by step
EXPLORING FORMS: Fourth quarter, 03 November 2025 – 01 Febraury 2026
- engaging new structures each week, whether in poetry, flash fiction, novel or nonfiction; transcending boundaries in content and form
Once you sign up, you will receive a syllabus with further instructional materials, including a full set of weekly writing assignments, recommended reading, scheduled internet conferences and discussions with classmates.
If you have a project already underway, you may choose to bring excerpts of that to the discussions, and apply lessons learned here to your other work. Your memoir may become more poetic; your essays may become more lively; your short stories may be imbued with more suspense and layering. Or you may discover that by the end of the year you have a portfolio of 52 small fictions or poems!
Go to the Sign Up page and get in touch!
Other online courses
- Short Courses (8 weeks) in Memoir, Humour, Historical Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Storytelling from Hybrid to Novella-in-flash
- Manuscript classes
Short courses: These classes are designed to encourage exploration and discussion, while advancing your own writing. Sessions are dynamic, with newcomers and experienced writers sharing a common, congenial space. We meet in Zoom; 2 hours each week for 8 weeks. Every week begins with a new topic, with recommended reading and new materials that present a variety of writing in the specific genre. This will give further context and help lay the groundwork for your writing. Each week includes an assignment, and we’ll share and talk about what you have written. Students may also submit work for specific feedback and suggestions for further thinking, in dialogue with the individual writer. The group dynamic, combined with individual editing and revision work, creates an intense and focused reading and writing experience. These classes are in Memoir, Humour, Historical Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Storytelling from Hybrid to Novella-in-flash and the new series begins in March 2025.
Manuscript groups: For individuals working specifically towards publication, whether writing essays or poetry, short fiction or longer-form novels. These are set up as fortnightly gatherings, with specific focus on a small set of pages each time, usually from 2 writers in each session. In this way, you will learn more about critical and creative critiquing of each other’s work, and this focus can be applied to your own. Students enter a colleagueship with others, and also gain individual feedback from the tutor with each new set of pages. New sessions begin in February 2025.
Please get in touch if you are interested in joining a short course or a manuscript class!
52|250 A Year of Writing 