The Faber Writing Creative Nonfiction (WCNF) Course has been an extraordinary and enriching experience for me as a writer. Under the literary baton of Rebecca Giggs, I came to understand how WCNF is a duet between the writer as witness – watching the self, watching the world – and reader.

At our first meeting, we were swept back to the roots of WCNF, to Montaigne in the sixteenth century and his ‘invention’ of the personal essay, a literary form combining sharp observation, juicy anecdotes, and philosophical wit. His motto ‘What do I know?’ became a catch cry for me during the course, as Rebecca Giggs took us on a journey through the landscape of ‘writing true.’ I found that the terrain of WCNF is charged with a sense of quest, digging, discovery and re-discovery.

It was a pleasure to travel with a diverse group of writers, each pursuing a different mode of WCNF, including memoir, personal essay, cultural and natural history. Discussions of our set readings were lively and thought-provoking. We shared moments of humour and pathos, especially during workshopping sessions. Rebecca Giggs fostered an atmosphere of writerly support and generosity. She inspired us to be playful, experimental and ‘true,’ seeking the vein of gold that lurked within our writing. We were fortunate to have two fabulous guest speakers: writer Fiona Wright, and literary agent Rachel Crawford, who shared their writing, editing, and publishing experiences.

Rebecca Giggs was an articulate and erudite guide, leading us from the granular level of the sentence, to the art of reading with a writerly eye. We discussed voice, notebooks, harnessing techniques of fiction (scene, characterisation, dialogue, pace, narrative arc), research, and interviewing. We were encouraged to be playful and curious, to experiment with texture, using different text types to create a collage. My favourite session was ‘curating the voice,’ intuiting how to give distinct instruments in one’s orchestra a chance to ‘sing’ on the page.

We also reaped the benefits of two, one-on-one conversations with Rebecca Giggs who providing thoughtful and astute counsel on our writing projects. Indeed, throughout the course, Rebecca Giggs was exceedingly generous in her clear-sighted personal and professional insights regarding the writing and publishing process.

A serendipitous outcome of the course was encountering a zesty community of writers. Now a group of us meets regularly to swap drafts, ideas, feedback, and seeds of new stories. Writing our duets, playful or contemplative, we watch the self, watching the world.

Writing Creative Nonfiction with Rebecca Giggs
ONLINE
21 February – 26 September 2023
Full details and applications