***NEW FOR 2025***
Join us in the picturesque village of Wendover, nestled in the Chiltern Hills less than an hour from London for a day of creative inspiration with a difference. This is a day-long creative writing course with all the counter-cultural panache you’ve come to associate with Rough Trade Books. We’ll be hosting a series of four ‘Rough Magic Days’ over the course of 2025 in which you will spend time with a range of RTB authors on different genres including poetry, fiction, life-writing and the art of the short story as well as a spectacular walking/writing workshop with RTB editor, award-winning author and poet WILL BURNS.
OVERVIEW OF THE DAY
You’ll arrive in the village in the morning and meet at our local bookshop Real Magic Books. After a cup of something warm and possibly caffeinated, we’ll hit the hills with Will Burns, punctuating the views with writing prompts, exercises and literary points of interest.
Back in Wendover, we’ll break for lunch before your special guest writer takes over for your afternoon session in the upstairs space in Real Magic Book shop. After another couple of hours of furious literary activity, we’ll head up to the local pub, where your guest writer will do a short reading before availing themselves of any questions you might have. We’ll soak up the atmosphere in the bar for a couple of hours (or as long as anyone fancies!) before heading our separate ways.
MORNING
10am – 10.15am - Meet up, short introduction at Real Magic Books
10.15am – 12.30pm - Walk through the hills with Rough Trade Books editor, Will Burns, to get the writing juices flowing.
LUNCH 12.30pm – 1.30pm
AFTERNOON
1.30pm – 3.30pm – Rough Trade Books Author Writing Workshop session at Real Magic Books
3.30pm – 5pm – Reading and Q&A session at the King & Queen pub
***
With a unique blend of outdoor inspiration, the plethora of Rough Trade Books authors who will be running the sessions, and that particular brand of rock’n’roll literary flair we try to bring to all that we do, these really will be writing workshops unlike any others. We promise fun, inclusive, ambitious, intelligent days out for anyone who wants to come and sample a bit of Rough Trade Books life. Real Magic Books is also a one-off—with an expertly curated selection of the best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry, well-stocked classics, as well as a beautiful setting to work in. And for the final part of the day we’ll be welcomed into the King & Queen, a perfect little village local full of stories and characters of its own. What better way to treat yourself or the writer in your life, frustrated or otherwise, than with a day in Rough Tradesville?
SATURDAY 22nd FEBRUARY - POETRY WITH ELLA FREARS
ELLA FREARS is a poet and artist based in London. Her collection Shine, Darling (2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Goodlord: An Email (2024) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection as well as the Sky Arts Awards.
She has held residencies and fellowships for the Tate Gallery, the National Trust, Royal Holloway University physics department, John Hansard Gallery, the Dartington Trust, 16 motorway service stations, the number 17 bus in Southampton, and Exeter University’s environmental history department.
She is currently the RLF Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She hosts "Tears for Frears" on Soho Radio.
SATURDAY 19th APRIL - FICTION WITH SHEENA PATEL
SHEENA PATEL is a writer and assistant director for the film and TV industry. She is part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE collective and her debut novel I'm a Fan won the Discover Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2023, has been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize and finalist in the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Category for the L.A. Times Book Prize. It was Foyles Fiction Book of the Year 2022 and an Observer Best Debut Novel of 2022.
SATURDAY 21st JUNE - LIFE-WRITING WITH MUSA OKWONGA
MUSA OKWONGA is an award-winning author whose work explores society, politics and race. The co-host of the Stadio football podcast with Ryan Hunn, he studied law at St. John’s College, University of Oxford, where he is now an Honorary Fellow. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has written seven books. Recent publications include: One of Them: An Eton College Memoir (2021), In The End, It Was All About Love (2021), and Striking Out (co-authored with Ian Wright), (2021), winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Children’s Sports Book of the Year Award. He lives and works in Berlin.
SATURDAY 13th SEPTEMBER - SHORT STORY WITH WENDY ERSKINE
WENDY ERSKINE's two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move, are published by The Stinging Fly Press and Picador. She has been listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Prize. She was awarded the Butler Prize for Literature and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize. Dance Move was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. Her writing on arts of all kinds, from sculpture to body-building, has been published in the Guardian and the Quietus among others, and for PVA Books she edited well I just kind of like it, an anthology about art in the home and the home as art. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster, interviewer and willing collaborator on all manner of projects. She is also a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut novel The Benefactors is out in June and published by Sceptre.