“A word after a word after a word is power” Margaret Atwood
Join Team WHQ, Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), and a carefully curated team of incredible authors for a month of panels, workshops, write-alongs and events exploring stories, writing and creativity as radical, political and powerful.
During September, we’re taking a deep dive into the rebellious, subversive nature of creativity and what that means for you, an individual writer sitting in front of a laptop wishing things were better, and for all of us, a community of humans existing together in a world where change often feels impossible.
We’re going to wade deep into the transformative possibilities of fiction and how stories can open portals, sow seeds of change, or lob a well-timed literary Molotov in the jaws of the machine. Fuck yeah!
But! The WHQ Writing as Resistance Festival isn’t just about talking, we’re also doing. With a series of free guided workshops, we are challenging all of you to write a brand new story, but one that’s unlike anything you’ve written before. And then we’ll end he month with a mass celebration during which we’ll send all our stories into the world at once.
What’s happening during the Writers’ HQ Writing as Resistance Festival
Panel discussions, workshops, and amazing authors
This is a month for learning, talking, thinking and doing. We have THIRTEEN (13) events lined up throughout September to support your craft. With Leone Ross, Lidia Yuknavitch, Sarah Royston, Timothy J. Jarvis, Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, Lindz McLeod, Annouchka Bayley, and Linh S Nguyễn.
The Mass Submission Project
Can stories change the world? Absolutely yes. Throughout the month, via a series of free workshops, we’re challenging you to write a story about climate justice that’s unlike anything you’ve written before. And at the end, we’re all going to submit those stories to the same five mainstream publications.
Why are we doing this? Part protest, part art, part ritual outsporing of our collective desires and a demand to be heard. We don’t necessarily expect anything to be published (yet! Cooeee future anthology maybe?!), but we are out to make a noise.
There is so much more that stories can do. So we’re going to do it.
Write Alongs
Join us online every Monday in September for an hour of writing alongside other writerly buddies for a guided writing session. Explore your stories more deeply and find those fundamental human truths. It’s all about accountability, support, and the lovely, lovely WHQ community ?
Love! ?
Aww yeah. Writers’ HQ is overflowing with the absolute best writerly humans this side of the internet. The most word-slinging, tea-drinking, story-writing, biscuit-dunking, procrastination-busting, support-giving writing community around. Come and hang with us!
How does it work?
The Mass Submission project events are FREE for everyone
All other events are accessible for Writers’ HQ Gold Star Members members
1
Get yourself a free membership or a Writers’ HQ Gold Star Membership from as little as £20 here.
2
Sign up to any of the events you want to attend and commit to writing something completely different to your previous work.
Then throughout September we’ll email you pep and vim to keep you going, including the links you need to access all the events.
3
You write all the cool stuff you’ve been wanting to write for ages and we change the world
You ready?
What does Writers’ HQ bring to the party?
Experience!
Over a decade of experience supporting writers through their challenges, guiding them through their args and blarghs and blocks, getting them moving and getting them to love their writing
Magic!
Home to the most special, most magical, most kickass and supportive community of writers this side of the internet.
Track record!
A proven track record of guiding writers through their novels to create something wonderful
Joy!
We focus on the joy. Writing shouldn’t be a chore. We bring the fun, and the rest follows easily (ish)
The Writing As Resistance Festival is organised by a crack team of overthinkers and overachievers
(It is also generously supported by Anglia Ruskin University and Strathclyde University)
Sarah Royston
Sarah Royston is a writer and researcher based at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). Her work is inspired by queer ecologies, folklore and re-enchantment as resistance. Since being initiated into the WHQ community/cult in 2021, she’s published fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction in The Rumpus, Dark Mountain, Popshot Quarterly and Crow & Cross Keys, among others. Her first book, Fernseed, is released by The Braag in September 2024. She is one of the 2024 ARU Writtle Writers in Residence.
Timothy J. Jarvis
Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer with an interest in the antic and the strange. His cult ‘last man’ novel, The Wanderer, was first released in summer 2014 by Perfect Edge Books and republished by Zagava in 2022. Short fiction has appeared in various venues and in 2023 his debut collection, Treatises on Dust, was published by Swan River Press. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Anglia
Ruskin University. He is one of the 2024 ARU Writtle Writers in Residence.
Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs
Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs is a social scientist, author, and coach based near the Lake District. Katherine helped raise more than a £1 million to set up community sustainability projects, including co-founding a Transition Town and a bike rental scheme. For over a decade she has lectured on sustainable lifestyles, organisational change and climate activism at UK universities. Her personal essays have appeared in Yes! Solutions Journalism, Literary Veganism, Fast Company, among others. Most mornings she can be found with muddy knees weeding at the allotment or recording content for her podcast Joyful Climate Writing. She is one of the 2024 ARU Writtle Writers in Residence.
Sarah Lewis
Sarah Lewis was an environmental journalist and editor for 15 years with work published in The Guardian, The New Statesman, Green Futures and The Ecologist, as well as launching and running an eco-ethical lifestyle magazine. She studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia where she won the David Higham Award. She has been mentored by critically acclaimed authors Peter Hobbs and Leone Ross, was one of the NWS10 talented early career writers, and gained a rarely given ‘special mention’ in the BBC Short Story Award. She hasn’t finished anything significant recently though because she’s too busy running Writers’ HQ and making sure you lot all finish stuff. She is one of the 2024 ARU Writtle Writers in Residence.
Access everything with a Gold Star Writers’ HQ membership
- Access every event in the Writing As Resistance Festival
- Access to every WHQ novel writing course
- The Writers’ HQ community forum
- All of the many other member benefits
