How to get into travel writing at the Chester Literature Festival
November 17, 2019The Chester Literature Festival was in full swing this week. I was there on Friday to run a travel-writing workshop [pictured above] for future freelancers and career changers seeking to branch out. Some planned to pitch ideas to magazines, others were looking to develop their voice online as a blogger.… Read more
Two essential events at this year’s Chester Lit Fest
November 25, 2018A busy day at Chester’s Storyhouse, then. It was the final full week of the Chester Literature Festival and I was running two events last week — a morning discussion [first two slides] and a lunchtime workshop [latter two slides]. The former was based around my book, Inside Fatherhood, and… Read more
The Amazing Story Of How My Music Fanzine Made History
March 9, 2018It was 1994. I was a student on a postgraduate magazine journalism course in London with a project deadline. Step forward Heaven Up Here, a music fanzine I put together with two fellow students. We dreamed of jobs on Select magazine and loved getting on the guestlist for gigs at… Read more
Writing workshops: how to read magazines — and write for them
September 22, 2017If it’s Friday, then it’s a magazine masterclass in Chester. I ran the first in a series of new-style workshops today, hosted by Meltdown, in which we got to grips with some of the thorny issues of making it as a magazine journalist. Such as, you ask? Well, try signposting,… Read more
Tortoise Magazine writing workshop at the Good Life Experience
September 21, 2017A phone call out the blue. It was the nice people from Tortoise, Chester’s independent magazine. They had a stand at the Good Life Experience, the annual festival of, well, good life, taking over Hawarden for a weekend each September. And they were thinking of running some writing workshops to… Read more
A travel-writing masterclass at HiOA university, Oslo
September 15, 2017To Oslo then — thanks to an Erasmus exchange with a British university. After a week in the Norwegian capital, I learnt that photojournalism is alive and well in Scandinavia, you can buy a pint for less than £10 and knitting is actively encouraged in the front row of Nordic… Read more
Reporting for BBC School Report Day at Queens Park High School, Chester
March 11, 2016BBC School Report marked its tenth anniversary this week. The initiative from BBC News helps 11 to 16-year-old students develop their journalistic skills. I joined a group of wannabe hacks at Queens Park High School, Chester, to brainstorm ideas for print- and video-journalism reports. Check out some of the work… Read more
KS2 writing workshop for Overleigh St Mary’s Primary School, Chester
December 11, 2015Just time to fit in another workshop for schools before Christmas. It was, in fact, a return trip to Overleigh St Marys Primary School in Chester to run another media writing workshop for Key Stage 2 (KS2). The focus this year was news (factual writing) vs. blogs (persuasive writing) and… Read more
IVC writing workshop — How to write a magazine feature
November 2, 2015Workshop news. I ran a taster session for the Chester IVC group last night [pictured above]. It was based around writing features for magazines and hosted by the Cross Keys pub in their upstairs room, plus fuelled by one of their Sunday roasts. We developed some great story ideas on… Read more