Room 5

Rukhsana Ahmad is a British writer of Pakistani origin. Her stage plays include Homing Birds (shortlisted for Best Stage Production by Asian Media Awards) and River on Fire (runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize). Her books include: The Hope Chest, The Gatekeeper’s Wife and other stories and Mistaken: Annie Besant in India. She has scripted several original plays for BBC Radio 4 and World Service. Her many adaptations include Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (nominated: Sony award) and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (nominated: Best Adaptation by the Writers’ Guild Award).

Rukhsana will be offering a course in creative writing inspired by a real life story.

I am the founder of Kite Studios (est. in 2005), a creative oasis in Shepherds Bush which offers inclusive art, drawing, pottery and printmaking workshops to children and adults of all ages, abilities and needs.

I will be offering drawing sessions for families and individuals of all abilities, aimed at developing a mindful approach, which helps to build confidence. Also on offer: pottery with my brother & gardening with my father.

Saul Boyer is an actor, comedian and award-winning writer (RSC-Marlowe Other Prize 2014), who trained at ArtsEd and Cambridge University. He has written for stage, audio and is in the process of developing a screenplay with a prominent film production company.

Saul is also a tutor of nine years’ experience and has a degree in English Literature from Cambridge University.

Saul is offering sessions on playwriting, screenwriting and how to write narrative and sketch comedy, as well as home tutoring sessions for kids and adults. He is also offering voice and performance coaching.

Anton has written ten plays championing the need for roles for women in theatre, all focusing on the lives of celebrated women of the 19th and 20th centuries. His plays include Bette & Joan, starring Greta Scacchi and Anita Dobson (Arts Theatre) and Mrs. Pat, starring Dame Penelope Keith (Chichester Festival Theatre).

His first contemporary play, Year of the Virgin, was recently read at The Charing Cross Theatre, starring Sian Thomas.

His plays have been performed worldwide and are published by Samuel French Ltd.

Anton is offering coaching on how to create a play for the stage, whether from an original idea or an adaptation from an existing work.

I'm Clare and I'm a book publisher. I've worked for several of the bigger houses (including Orion, Hodder and HarperCollins) as well as setting up two companies, first The Friday Project and more recently RedDoor Press.

I'll be offering sessions with RedDoor author Hattie Edmonds on how to make sure your book is ready to be published. I'll also be looking after our in-house Book Club.

Simon is a theatre and screen actor, most recently seen as General Quinn in Star Wars 9 and Douglas Carswell in Brexit An Uncivil War. On stage his many roles include Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe), Malvolio in 12th Night (National) and The Once-ler in Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Old Vic), which was described by the Guardian as ‘the best family show since Mathilda’.

Simon and his son Theo will be reading Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax.

Lucille is a fine art painter who specialises in figurative paintings. She studied at St Martin’s and at the Byam Shaw School of Art (scholarship) in the 80’s and went on to teach life drawing at Byam Shaw. She also taught painting and drawing from direct observation and compositional pieces in art schools and privately.

Lucille will be offering a 3 week portrait painting course and still life drawing classes.

After a ten year career as a music journalist for a German pop magazine, Hattie became the first in-house writer at Comic Relief, working in a team on comedy projects with Richard Curtis, as well as interviewing project users including Rwandan widows, women experiencing domestic violence and child carers. Her first novel Cinema Lumiere topped the Amazon fiction charts and her second The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick was described as “a beautifully crafted tale about a young man’s spiritual transformation.”

Hattie is offering sessions on: ‘Writing for Wellbeing’ and ‘Writing from the Heart'.

Elizabeth Fremantle is a novelist, whose published works include Queen’s Gambit, The Girl in the Glass Tower and Sisters of Treason. As EC Fremantle her ‘electrifying, brilliantly executed thriller’ The Poison Bed was a Times Book of the Year. The Bookseller described her as ‘a major new voice in historical fiction,’ and People Magazine called her ‘a brilliant new player in the court of royal fiction.’

Elizabeth is offering creative writing classes.

Vayu Naidu is a storyteller, performer and writer. Her novels include The Sari of Surya Villas, Sita’s Ascent and Under the Banyan, as well as several collections of children’s stories. Vayu is also credited with coining the term 'performance storytelling' and her stories of Indian and European mythologies have been performed on stages in the UK, Scandinavia, Europe and India. She won the Arts & Humanities award for her teaching Storytelling at University of Kent, Canterbury.

Vayu is offering a creative writing course using world Myths as inspiration for your own stories

Through my book reviews on this site, I hope to share some of the pleasures I have experienced throughout my life, and continue to experience, guided by the gentle hand of literature.