Ateliers d'écriture

Ces ateliers d'écriture se dérouleront uniquement en anglais. Every first Wednesday of the month, Damla will organize fantastic writing workshops (2 hours long!). For every workshop, she has prepared different themes. On this page, you'll find more information about each writing session.

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Fourth workshop / May, 6th - "Bread and Roses": Writing as a Form of Protest - TUESDAY instead of Wednesday!
We rise with anger and hope, grief and joy, fear and determination.
We rise, fueled by the belief in a better world.
With a piece of paper and a pen or pencil...

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A sure-handed poet turns those feelings and emotions into verses to be recited in the
crowd—like Louis Aragon, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg or Nâzım Hikmet.
Activists transcribe their words onto banners, street walls, and barricades,
as they did during the 1968 revolts and the countless movements before and since.
Together, they make a poem—for the street and in the street.

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In the fourth session of our writing workshop, we will explore the deep connection between
literary arts and acts of protest. We will ask: Do writers have a responsibility to engage with
societal and political issues? What are the functions of fictions for protest cultures and vice
versa? Can the poetic ever be separated from the political?

And, of course, we will write—crafting our own pieces guided by prompts and letting our
words rise!

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Third workshop / April, 3rd - The Wind Whispers, and We Write with Nature (full) - THURSDAY instead of Wednesday!

“The rain starts, beating my face. Then I look at the sky, in the dark night, with its shiny stars,
lost amidst the city lights...”

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Natural phenomena: We name our children after them. We invoke them to express our
emotions and actions. We also use them to set the ambiance in our writings and to transfer the
feelings of our protagonists. We breathe in and out the air, and we write. We write with
nature...

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In the third session of our writing workshop, we will explore the role nature plays in fostering
creativity, remembering Whitman, Rilke, and Hugo—the poets whose verses pay tribute to
nature. We will also examine the ways natural events are portrayed in literature and discuss
whether fiction writing can help raise awareness about environmental issues.

For sure, we won’t forget to write our own short pieces, guided by crafted prompts and
inspired by nature!

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Second workshop / March, 5th - ...We Write (in) Silence... (full)

“The night descends and the howls of the dogs rise behind the forest in fog; I touch the worn-
out keys of the typewriter. I hear... every single stroke of the ancient clock resounds in my
heart.”
 

* What is silence? How do we define it? What are its implications for an author?
* How can we read the silence on pages? What happens when a text refuses to narrate?
* What are the functions of the veiled words? Can they help to write the unspeakable?
 

Exploring such questions, in the second session of our writing workshop, we’ll discuss the
solitary dimension of the act of writing and experiment with the role of silence as a narrative
technique. In this context, we’ll reference the concept of écriture féminine and its
implications for creative writing. The session will also include writing prompts to inspire
short passages, followed by writing exercises.

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First workshop / February, 5th - Shout your Voice to Write! (full)
Imagine you’re in a bookstore, and a strange wind sweeps only the cover pages of all the
books of the earth. You can no longer tell which book is written by whom, yet I bet that, as
super book dragons, you will be able to guess some of the authors—like Dostoyevsky, Kleist,
or Proust—based on the echo of their voices between the lines on the faded pages.

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This makes it inevitable to ask:
* What makes an author’s voice strong and unique?
* How can we discover and strengthen our own writing voices?
* Does the form we write in—prose or poetry—influence our voices, or vice versa?
 

In the first session of our writing workshop, we’ll explore these questions to understand the
magic behind the concept of the Voice—the key element that makes our writings unique and
memorable. The session will include writing prompts to inspire short passages, followed by
exercises to help us find and reinforce our own voices.

Important information
Time: 19.00-21.00
Places available: 6 
Costs: €25

If you're interested, please send us an email with subject line "Writing Workshop" to contact@thelittlebookshop.fr.