Queer Ecological Writing

Genre-bending, subversive, playful and trope-defying - queer up your writing by getting elbow-deep with fungus and lichen.
Get this course and so much more
  • Techniques for bringing nature, place and landscape to life in your fiction
  • Exercises and prompts to inspire feral, sensuous, rooted writing
  • Challenge normative ideas of nature, heterosexuality and binary expectations
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Queer ecology is all about challenging binaries and embracing the entanglement of humans and nature.

This course aims to squirt some spores of queer ecological inspiration into your writing, regardless of genre. This kind of writing can be playful, weird, subversive and a space for experiments.

We’ll delve into some examples of queer ecological writing from around the world, ranging from the raw to the lyrical, and the luscious to the downright icky. We’ll explore how hybrids and shapeshifters can help us mess with rigid binaries, and take inspiration from the glorious weirdness of nature (including penis-nibbling slugs, frisky bonobos and the faceless cusk).

The course invites you to engage more deeply with the settings in your writing, crafting not just scenic backdrops but vibrant inner-outer worlds. We’ll reflect on the challenges of rooting ourselves while writing our rage and grief, as well as celebrating eco-erotic joy and sensory delight.

Along the way, a series of creative prompts and exercises will help rewild and reweird your imagination. Be ready to get your hands dirty.

Queer Ecological Writing is written by Sarah Royston
Sarah Royston’s writing is inspired by the Hookland motto: re-enchantment is resistance. Her book, Fernseed: A Collection of Tales was published by The Braag in 2024. Other stories exploring queer ecologies and English landscapes have appeared in Dark Mountain, Tractor Beam and The Rumpus among others. She lives in Hertfordshire UK, and works as a sustainability researcher at Anglia Ruskin University.

https://hedgeways.wordpress.com/
Fernseed: A Collection of Tales by Sarah Royston

What's inside the course?

Course Content

Upper Cortex
Algal Layer
Medulla
Lower cortex
Rhizinae

The Sacred Writers' HQ Promise

You’ll write your butt off

You have stories in your head and you want to get your butt in a chair and get them onto paper, but life gets in the way. Kids, work, executive dysfunction, the state of the world, important doomscrolling – all these things conspire against you, but you know there’s a better way and you are ready to stop fucking about and start writing. 

Learn how to carve time, prioritise your work, and evolve a deep creative practice
Gain strategies for getting the most out of every writing session
Find ways to love your writing, keep on going and finish your story

What's included

  • Text-based course units
  • Easy to follow exercises
  • Support forums and access to the best writing community this side of the internet
  • Love and validation and more writing-based pep than you can shake a stick at
  • Snacks*

*bring your own snacks

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WHQ is fantastic! I did a free writing course with WHQ at the start of the pandemic and joined up straight after – since then I have had over twenty pieces published, been long and shortlisted in various competitions and won one at the beginning of this year – the tutors, and the encouragement of the forum members, are fantastic.

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