You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in, and enthusiasm for, the short story form. To get the most from the course, you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback, and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi, or horror – we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres. This course will be taught by author, Michelle Green.

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction, or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers (for the avoidance of doubt, short stories typically weigh in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long, for the purpose of this course we will be looking at stories up to 5,000 words long).

Something to write with (pen and paper will do) during sessions, and a computer and internet access at home, to upload your work in progress to the online drop box, or email to the group. If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to the sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do this at your own expense.

Rebecca Burns is short story writer and novelist. Her work has been published in over thirty online and print journals, and she has won or been placed in many competitions: Fowey Festival of Words and Music Short Story Competition, (winner and runner-up in 2014), Black Pear Press Short Story Competition (2014, winner), Univ. of Sunderland Short Story Award (2016, longlisted), Evesham Festival Story Competition (2016, shortlisted) and Chipping Norton Short Story Award (shortlisted).

Her debut collection of short stories, Catching the Barrmundi, was published by Odyssey Books in 2012 and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Award, the UK’s only prize for short story collections. Her second collection, The Settling Earth (2014) was also longlisted for the Edge Hill. Her third collection, Artefacts and Other Stories, was published in 2017. Her novel The Bishop’s Girl appeared in 2016 and her second novel, Beyond the Bay, was published in September.

Comma Press is a Manchester-based short story specialist publisher

For previous course feedback, testimonials and cancellation policy, click here.

5th August

2nd September

7th October

4th November