Ty Newydd National Writers’ Centre is offering a week-long course that will be particularly helpful for writers who would like to apply for entry to postgraduate creative writing courses. Sara Maitland andGraham Mort (plus guest writer, novelist Tristan Hughes). Residential: £525 (single); £450 (shared) . In partnership with Lancaster University. Whether you write poetry or prose, and whatever your thematic focus, this course aims to give you a new ambition in finding ways of developing your work to a higher standard. From the lyric poem to prose fiction, it will explore techniques in the use of language and structural effects that establish the vital relationship between writers and readers. Its focus will be on the way that readers ‘construct’ the experience of the finished work and the ways that writers can anticipate, understand and control this process. Finding common ground between literary forms, it will be of particular – though not exclusive – interest to those writers who are considering developing their work through a Higher Education course and will feature seminars and workshops that use methods from those programmes. Sounds serious? Don’t worry: we aim to have fun and produce plenty of new work!