Faber to launch new range of creative writing courses in Newcastle 

Faber Academy, Faber’s creative writing school, is launching a new range of courses in Newcastle.

Working in partnership with New Writing North, Faber Academy will host a variety of courses at Newcastle’s The Common Room.

These will include the flagship six-month Writing a Novel course with lead tutor Preti Taneja, winner of this year’s Gordon Burn Prize. Other planned courses include Getting Started: Beginners’ Fiction with Margaret Wilkinson, Writing Poems with Pippa Little and John Challis, and Memoir and Life Writing with Lucie Brownlee.

The courses will launch in March 2023, and Faber Academy will be extending its scholarship programme to offer free places to students who would otherwise be unable to attend.

Joey Connolly, director of Faber Academy, said: “As a writer and a northerner myself, being able to bring Faber Academy to the north is perhaps the most exciting initiative of my career to date. Newcastle and the north-east have such a vibrant literary culture already, so to be able to find ways to work within that, and to contribute to it, is a genuine source of personal pride as well as an exciting new chapter for Faber Academy.”

Mary Cannam, Faber’s m.d , described the north-east as “a very special area, which harbours immense talent”, adding: “It is extremely exciting to be working with The Common Room and New Writing North in this new venture.”

Chief Executive of New Writing North Claire Malcolm said of the initiative: “New Writing North is delighted to welcome Faber to Newcastle, and its arrival is both a cause for celebration and a milestone on our journey to making the north- east the best place in the country to develop your craft as a writer.

“For Faber to choose Newcastle as its first location outside London speaks a great deal to how buzzing the city is with writers, aspiring writers and the publishers and organisations that support them. We look forward to supporting the academy in its new home and to working with Faber to extend the initiatives around publishing and industry insight that we already deliver with them and greatly value.”

Faber Academy launched in London in 2008, with an online programme beginning in 2010; it has since also run one-off courses in Dublin, Glasgow, Paris and Toronto. Its alumni includes S J Watson, Alice Feeney, Rachel Joyce, Joanna Cannon, Ali Land and Gail Honeyman, alongside recent Booker longlistee Maddie Mortimer, Saara El-Arifi and Natasha Brown, whose debut novel Assembly was shortlisted for the Folio, Goldsmiths and Betty Trask prizes and saw her named as one of the Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021. Over 170 alumni have secured publication deals so far.