Join us for a laid-back afternoon of creative writing! Artist and writer Helen Hopcroft will lead a creative writing workshop that focuses on writing the body, sensory worlds, sex and erotica. Revel in your love of storytelling and dive into a series of novel writing exercises designed to challenge, inspire and strengthen your writing.

Writers of all levels of experience are most welcome to attend. Workshop participants will be encouraged to share their drafts with the group, but this is not mandatory. Please bring a pen and paper or laptop, courage, curiousity, respect, decent observation skills and a sense of humour.

Helen is the author of The Nights, an erotica novella which reimagines the 1001 Nights from Scheherazade’s perspective. Published by iconic indie publisher Spineless Wonders with a foreword by Carmel Bird, The Nights will be launched at Newcastle Writers Festival. Book Launch: The Nights by Helen Hopcroft – Newcastle Writers Festival 2024

Endorsements of The Nights:

‘It’s difficult to describe how powerful this small book is. There’s the sheer poetry of the language. There’s the genuinely thrilling erotic writing (a rare thing indeed). There’s the deft weaving of the fictional, the magical, the soaring, the grotesque — by a woman coming into her power just when the world thinks her most powerless.’

Kelly Burke, actor

‘And let us not forget the urgent undercurrent of eroticism that underpins this entrancing novella. Indeed, I feel I can give no greater endorsement of The Nights than to say that it took me longer to read than I’d anticipated, simply because so arousing was this collection of tales that I had to interrupt my reading in order to act upon certain stirrings that had been awakened in me: again, and again and again.’

Paris Rosemont, Banana Girl