‘My Pencils Outlast Their Erasers’: Editing Masterclass for Writers with Ellah Allfrey
Saturday 1 July
13:00-16:00
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers — Valdimir Nabokov
This 3-hour masterclass with Ellah Allfrey is designed for writers who have completed drafts of work and want to improve their self-editing skills. With an emphasis on developing the skills to read one’s own work critically, topics covered will include first drafts, character mapping, plotting, structure and line editing.
Spaces are limited to a maximum of 12 people, so please book your place as soon as possible. To be eligible and make the most of this masterclass, you must have completed drafts of creative writing work. This can be fiction or non-fiction prose, but excludes poetry. Participants will be asked to read and reflect on a piece of writing in preparation for the day. Deadline for bookings is Friday 23 June 2017.
Tickets: £45 / £30 concessions. Some funded places are available. For booking information, email ras_events@soas.ac.uk
Please note this event is not included in the Day Ticket or Weekend Pass.
Ellah Wakatama Allfrey OBE, is a London-based editor and critic. She was Visiting Professor and Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana in 2016. She is on the judging panel for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and was Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation fellowship in Colombia. A recent guest contributing editor for the ‘Fear’ issue of Transition magazine, she is the former deputy editor of Granta magazine. She served as a judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Allfrey is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of Africa39 (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction (Dundurn/Cassava Republic, 2016). She has also served as chair of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She sits on the boards of Art for Amnesty, the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Jalada Collective (Kenya) and the Writers Centre Norwich and is a patron of the Etisalat Literature Prize.
