Writing workshop

with melissa fu

Saturday 8 February 2025, 11.00 - 16.00

Responding to Silent Conversations

In this creative writing workshop, we’ll engage with Lynne Cameron’s exhibition to generate writing that explores many modes of silent conversation.

Some of the questions we may explore include:

What is the role of silent conversation in art-making and art-regarding?

How do silent conversations arise in the spaces between artist, painting, and beholder?

How does one witness a silent conversation?

What role does the written word play as a medium for conversations across time or distance?

In what ways does proximity shape our understanding of silent conversations?

And how does one eavesdrop on a silent conversation?

Through individual response, small group collaboration, and plenary discussion, participants will be invited to engage with these questions via prompts that use the paintings and our responses to them as inspiration. As a generative workshop, the event is appropriate for writers of all genres, at all stages in their writing practice. Ages 18+

Exhibition opens at 10.00. Workshop from 11.00 – 16.00. Coffee, tea and light refreshments provided, but please bring a packed lunch (or plan to enjoy food from a nearby shop or café during a short break). Limited to 12 spots, £75, bursaries available (please enquire via hello@melissafu.com).

Workshop leader: Melissa Fu is from Northern New Mexico and lives in Cambridge, UK. With backgrounds in physics and English, she worked in education before focusing on writing. In 2018/2019, Melissa was the David TK Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia and was the recipient of an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Her first novel, Peach Blossom Spring, was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick in the UK and a 2022 Indies Introduce title for the American Booksellers Association. It was nominated for 'Book of the Year' by the Book of the Month Club, was a 'GoodReads Choice Award Nominee for Best Historical Fiction,' and has been translated into 7 languages.

More at melissafu.com