Fiction Essentials: Writing the City

We very much look forward to welcoming both new and returning students to the University of Southampton. Unless otherwise stated, all courses will be taught in person at our Avenue Campus.

We would like to advise that you will need to have the appropriate technology and suitable internet connection in place, as we will be making use of online materials. At Southampton, we use a virtual learning environment (VLE) called Blackboard which is used to deliver learning materials and real-time online teaching for our students.

Fiction Essentials: Writing the City

This creative writing course invites you to engage with urban space in your writing: to register its rhythms, map its corners, and think deeply about how the landscape of the city shapes your feelings and experiences. 

Each week, we’ll explore a set of texts that give voice to the city in different ways, from the flâneurs who strolled the streets of Paris to the Windrush-generation novelists documenting their experiences of London. These texts will act as prompts for your own writing, with exercises to help you experiment with form, voice, and subject.

Throughout the course you will be encouraged to draw on your own real or virtual experiences of straying through the city’s parks and streets, and recording the changing moods, atmospheres, sounds and scenery.

This 6-week course will take place online on Tuesday evenings from 18:30 to 20:30 starting on 28 January 2025 and finishing on 4 March 2025.

Course Description

Please see our price list below:

• Standard price - £115.00
• Staff/student/alumni price - £100.00

Please note: if you select the staff/student/alumni price option, you must use an online store account that has been set up with your University email address and fill out your University staff, student or alumni ID number when prompted as part of the questionnaire data section.

When booking a course please do consult our Terms and Conditions which set out our cancellation and refund policy.