Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 30th Jun - Sat 5th Jul, 2025
All Day
Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT
Life Writing with Salena Godden and Louisa Young
This exciting course is for writers at any stage of their projects who are exploring writing from or about their own life experiences.
Louisa and Salena have written fiction, memoir, biography, essays, poetry and songs, and understand where those forms overlap and how they differ. In guided workshops and generative exercises Louisa and Salena will share their knowledge and help you decide which is right for your project. What might it be like to really look at all the truth, the grief, joy, rage, love and hope inside your work?
During the week we will help you find your voice and your courage, and discover the words for big conversations with your past, present and future. We will work on structure and development, answering questions, resolving problems, and understanding potential pitfalls both technical and personal. Can you give yourself permission to be hopeful even when it feels like the world is burning? As writers we all have the capacity to be lighthouses to each other, to note not just the darkness and the storms but also the glimmers of light and hope. We will cause some good trouble — and send you away with a mental and emotional tool-kit to use on your path ahead. Let’s sit around a fire and share our stories…
Tutors
Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning novelist, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-Irish mixed heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Awards for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Her new full poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury and literary childhood memoir Springfield Road: A Poets Childhood Revisited were published with Canongate with a double book launch in May 2024. Her work has been widely published, anthologised, and broadcast on BBC radio, TV and film. A consistent supporter of the work of other poets, writers and artists, Salena Godden also co-hosts and curates a monthly arts and culture radio show and podcast Roaring 20’s Radio for Soho Radio with art journalist Amah-Rose Abrams and poet Matt Abbott.
Louisa Young FRSL is a British novelist, songwriter, short-story writer, biographer and journalist, whose work has appeared in 32 languages, and has been shortlisted for numerous prizes including the the Orange Prize, the Costa Novel of the Year, the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year (which it won), the Booktrust Teenage Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Folio Prize. She has published seven novels under her own name and five with her daughter, the actor Isabel Adomakoh Young, under the pen name Zizou Corder. She has also written three non-fiction books, The Book of the Heart, A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott, and her memoir, You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol, an account of her relationship with the composer Robert Lockhart, and of his alcoholism. Her most recent novel is Twelve Months and a Day.
Guest Reader
Michel Faber is the author of 10 books including the novels The Crimson Petal and The White, Under The Skin and The Book of Strange New Things, the short story collections Some Rain Must Fall and The Fahrenheit Twins and the poetry collection Undying. His first novel for Young Adults, D (A Tale of Two Worlds) was published in 2019 and his non-fiction study of music Listen (On Music, Sound And Us) was published in 2023.
Fees
The full fee for this course is £725. This includes your accommodation in a single room with shared bathroom, all meals, hot drinks and snacks from Monday afternoon until Saturday morning, and your tuition. For more information about the practicalities of our courses and retreats, please visit our About the Courses page.
A limited number of en-suite rooms are available, which can be booked in advance for a £50 surcharge. We will also reserve an en-suite room for anyone who may need it due to a medical condition. This will be offered out as an upgrade nearer the course start date if it is not needed.
A limited number of Twin Room places are available at a discounted price of £675 per person. When booking a Twin Room place, please tell us in the comments box which gender you are and which gender(s) you are comfortable sharing a room with. This information will remain confidential.
A small single room with a skylight is available at a discounted price of £700. Please note this room does not have an ordinary window, only a small skylight.
A deposit is required to secure your place, which is non-refundable after a 14-day cooling-off period. The balance payment of £475 is due six weeks before the course begins. Refunds are not always available – please read our Terms & Conditions for full details about our cancellation policy. If you would like to pay the full amount in advance, please call our booking office on 01463 592 828 or email info@moniackmhor.org.uk.
Bursaries are always available, and you also have the option to pay in instalments. If you have any problems paying online, or wish to discuss paying in instalments or applying for financial help, or would simply like assistance, please contact us by emailing info@moniackmhor.org.uk or phoning us on 01463 592828.
Access
Please let us know in your booking form if you have any access requirements, for example a ground floor bedroom and / or access to a step-free accessible shower room. We also reserve one en-suite bedroom per course for anyone who may need this due to a medical condition. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our Terms & Conditions before booking.