FWA: You’ve had a long and established career as an award-winning speculative fiction writer. What drew you to writing speculative fiction?

J.S: Although I’d been writing all my life, and had published some short fiction early on, I only got started professionally in 2013, so for me it really hasn’t been all that long. Speculative fiction drew me in because of the way it spoke to my own experiences living in a remote country village surrounded by woods and lakes and with a lot of time to myself. So I loved Edgar Allan Poe and the Bronte Sisters, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, as well as Young Adult fiction like A Wrinkle in Time, and later Douglas Adams and lots and lots of movies and comics. My early stories followed that path because I felt the tools of speculative fiction were the best way for me not to escape reality but to confront it.  

FWA: We’re pleased to introduce Kickstart Your Speculative Fiction Project to our Faber Writing Academy suite of courses. How is this course different to Writing a Speculative Fiction Novel offered at the end of the year?

J.S.: Kickstart your Speculative Fiction Project allows writers to get their ideas fleshed out on the page, and to meet a very doable goal of 10,000 words of either a first or zero draft. I spend each class session unpacking various elements of the writing craft applied to works of either fantasy, science fiction or horror and everything in between, supplemented by in-class exercises that will get students writing, guaranteed. These exercises translate really well to a longer work, or can be approached as a means to find inspiration, or to work on an aspect of creative practice that is a particular challenge to us in a safe, supportive learning environment.  

FWA: Speculative fiction is a vast category, including (but not limited to) horror, science fiction, fantasy, romantasy, magic realism and more – why do writers of these genres benefit from being in the same class? What is it that all writers of speculative fiction have in common?

J.S.: My experience is that writers of speculative fiction have no more in common than any other writers, except for the fact that we feel limited by the constraints of realistic fiction in order to tell our most urgent stories. The freedom to imagine anything, our love of lore, or magic, of wonder, of terror, of technology and our desire to push against timeworn tropes in order to make them fresh again, are often, but not always, the things we have in common. But I think that writers benefit from not being made to feel unwelcome, or in a minority, or misunderstood, or somehow less serious than the realist writers in the group.  Writers of speculative fiction, like writers of realistic fiction can, of course, benefit from being in a mixed class—and I run a long-running pub writing group where anything goes—but I do think that when you’re looking to kickstart a speculative fiction novel, it is of upmost benefit to be in a class of people grappling with the same issues: how to plot the impossible, how to manage dialogue often spoken by non-human characters, how to build worlds that you’ve only been to in your imagination, and so on.  

FWA: For people just starting out in their speculative fiction project, do they need to have any words on the page before they start this course? And how will this course help them get things off the ground?

J.S.: No previous words necessary. That is what we are here to do, gets words on the page using a mixture of writing goals, peer group accountability, regular reviews and regular troubleshooting. And above all, reading. I have a wonderful reading list, curated for the express purpose of providing examples and models of some of the more gnarly aspects of our craft, as well as essays and interviews with established writers. 

FWA: What excites you about this course and what do you hope people will take away from Kickstart Your Speculative Fiction Project?

J.S.: I love working with writers at the conceptual stage. Talking and listening are so important for us as solitary practitioners—it’s a myth that the writer is alone. There’s a whole community out there and it’s exhilarating to find it—lifelong friends and supportive colleagues just waiting to be made. Bringing beginning writers in from the wilderness, as my mentors and instructors did for me, is the most exciting part of the course, second only to seeing writers with something real to show for it at the end, the beginning of a novel. What I hope people will take away from the course is the feeling that they are too far along to turn back now, and will therefore have no option but to see it through to the end! 

Kickstart Your Speculative Fiction Project
with J.S. Breukelaar
ONLINE
18 February – 20 May 2026
Wednesdays 6:30pm – 8:30pm (AEDT/AEST)