Work in Progress

(Hardback)

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Description

An expert insight into the transformative power of storytelling, together with practical advice on how to make your writing come alive.

The way we use language to tell stories reveals a lot about who we are and what matters to us. In Work in Progress, Julia Bell draws on almost thirty years of teaching to take us inside the writing workshop, where students from all over the world meet to share and discuss their work. She finds that in this space a kind of alchemy occurs, wherepaying real attention to one another and what we have to say the ultimate challenge in our atomised, always on society becomes a profound emotional education.

Weaving philosophy, psychology and politics together with stories from the workshop, and featuring wise, practical advice on how to go about writing, this generous and thought-provoking book is about the transformative practice of noticing and slowing down. It shows how bad writing teaches us good things, how creativity helps us to see and be seen, and how reading and writing together fosters connection, tolerance, more expansive ways of thinking, richer access to language, new perspectives and a better understanding of ourselves and others.

Author Bio

Julia Bell is a Reader in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of three novels, a poetry collection and the acclaimed essay Radical Attention (Peninsula Press), and her work has been published in the TLS, the New Statesman, The Paris Review,and Prospect, as well as broadcast on the BBC. She has given talks and workshops across the UK and internationally for the British Council.