Andrew Cowan – författare

An elegant and intimate insight into the personal and practical processes of writing, Andrew Cowan’s The Art of Writing Fiction draws on his experience as a prize-winning novelist and his work with emerging writers at the University of East Anglia.

As illuminating for the recreational writer as for students of Creative Writing, the twelve chapters of this book correspond to the twelve weeks of a typical university syllabus, and provide guidance on mastering key aspects of fiction such as structure, character, voice, point of view, and setting, as well as describing techniques for stimulating creativity and getting the most out of feedback.

This new edition offers extended consideration to structure, point of view, and the organisation of time in the novel, as well as the conduct of the Creative Writing workshop in the light of the decolonising the curriculum movement. It features additional writing exercises, as well as an afterword with invaluable advice on approaching agents and publishers. The range of writers surveyed is greatly expanded, finding inspiration and practical guidance in the work of Margaret Atwood, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Richard Beard, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Richard Ford, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Anjali Joseph, James Joyce, James Kelman, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy, Sam Selvon, Vikram Seth, and Ali Smith, among many others.

With over 80 writing exercises and examples taken from dozens of novels and short stories, the new edition of The Art of Writing Fiction is enriched by the author’s own experience as a novelist and lecturer, making it an essential guide for readers interested in the theory, teaching, and practice of Creative Writing.

An elegant and intimate insight into the personal and practical processes of writing, Andrew Cowan’s The Art of Writing Fiction draws on his experience as a prize-winning novelist and his work with emerging writers at the University of East Anglia.

As illuminating for the recreational writer as for students of Creative Writing, the twelve chapters of this book correspond to the twelve weeks of a typical university syllabus, and provide guidance on mastering key aspects of fiction such as structure, character, voice, point of view, and setting, as well as describing techniques for stimulating creativity and getting the most out of feedback.

This new edition offers extended consideration to structure, point of view, and the organisation of time in the novel, as well as the conduct of the Creative Writing workshop in the light of the decolonising the curriculum movement. It features additional writing exercises, as well as an afterword with invaluable advice on approaching agents and publishers. The range of writers surveyed is greatly expanded, finding inspiration and practical guidance in the work of Margaret Atwood, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Richard Beard, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Richard Ford, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Anjali Joseph, James Joyce, James Kelman, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy, Sam Selvon, Vikram Seth, and Ali Smith, among many others.

With over 80 writing exercises and examples taken from dozens of novels and short stories, the new edition of The Art of Writing Fiction is enriched by the author’s own experience as a novelist and lecturer, making it an essential guide for readers interested in the theory, teaching, and practice of Creative Writing.

The rise of Creative Writing has been accompanied from the start by two questions: can it be taught, and should it be taught? This scepticism is sometimes shared even by those who teach it, who often find themselves split between two contradictory identities: the artistic and the academic. Against Creative Writing explores the difference between ‘writing’, which is what writers do, and Creative Writing, which is the instrumentalisation of what writers do.

Beginning with the question of whether writing can or ought to be taught, it looks in turn at the justifications for BA, MA, and PhD courses, and concludes with the divided role of the writer who teaches. It argues in favour of Creative Writing as a form of hands-on literary education at undergraduate level and a form of literary apprenticeship at graduate level, especially in widening access to new voices. It argues against those forms of Creative Writing that lose sight of literary values – as seen in the proliferation of curricular couplings with non-literary subjects, or the increasing emphasis on developing skills for future employment.

Against Creative Writing, written by a writer, is addressed to other writers, inside or outside the academy, at undergraduate or graduate level, whether ‘creative’ or ‘critical’.

The rise of Creative Writing has been accompanied from the start by two questions: can it be taught, and should it be taught? This scepticism is sometimes shared even by those who teach it, who often find themselves split between two contradictory identities: the artistic and the academic. Against Creative Writing explores the difference between ‘writing’, which is what writers do, and Creative Writing, which is the instrumentalisation of what writers do.

Beginning with the question of whether writing can or ought to be taught, it looks in turn at the justifications for BA, MA, and PhD courses, and concludes with the divided role of the writer who teaches. It argues in favour of Creative Writing as a form of hands-on literary education at undergraduate level and a form of literary apprenticeship at graduate level, especially in widening access to new voices. It argues against those forms of Creative Writing that lose sight of literary values – as seen in the proliferation of curricular couplings with non-literary subjects, or the increasing emphasis on developing skills for future employment.

Against Creative Writing, written by a writer, is addressed to other writers, inside or outside the academy, at undergraduate or graduate level, whether ‘creative’ or ‘critical’.

The Art of Writing Fiction guides the reader through the processes of creative writing from journal-keeping to editing, offering techniques for stimulating creativity and making language vivid. Readers will master key aspects of fiction such as structure, character, voice and setting.

Andrew Cowan provides an insightful introduction that brings his own well-crafted prose style to bear on the processes and pleasures of writing fiction, offering practical and personal advice culled from his own experience and that of other published writers. He lays open to the reader his own notes, his writing, and the experiences from his own life that he has drawn on in his fiction allowing the reader to develop their own writing project alongside the author as they go through the book.

The Art of Writing Fiction guides the reader through the processes of creative writing from journal-keeping to editing, offering techniques for stimulating creativity and making language vivid. Readers will master key aspects of fiction such as structure, character, voice and setting.

Andrew Cowan provides an insightful introduction that brings his own well-crafted prose style to bear on the processes and pleasures of writing fiction, offering practical and personal advice culled from his own experience and that of other published writers. He lays open to the reader his own notes, his writing, and the experiences from his own life that he has drawn on in his fiction allowing the reader to develop their own writing project alongside the author as they go through the book.

It''s market day in an English city two years into the Great War. The farmers are coming in from the country, the cattle are being driven through the streets and that evening a trainload of wounded soldiers is due to arrive. At the local mansion, its new hospital tents to the ready, waits Montague Beckwith, himself a psychological casualty of the war. In the town''s poorest quarter, Winnie Barley prays that Walter, her missing son, will be on the train (but that her violent husband is not). In the pharmacy, Gertie Dobson dreams of romance while her father keeps unsuitable men at bay. And everywhere is Walter, a ghostly presence who watches as the girl he loved from a distance is drawn into Montague''s orbit. Weaving together multiple viewpoints, Andrew Cowan creates a panoramic, extraordinarily vivid portrait of a place as individual as it is archetypal. Here is a community where the war permeates high and low; where the factory now produces barbed wire, the women are doing the men''s jobs, and the young men are no longer so eager to answer the King''s call. And here is the tragic story of a casual betrayal, and a boy who proved that those at the bottom of the heap - the worthless ones - could be the most valiant of them all. Â

Ashley, a disaffected geography teacher and Jay, a printer in a local arts project, are about to start a family, though both have mixed feelings about becoming parents, especially when their house is crumbling around them and their neighbourhood seems increasingly anarchic. As Jay becomes deeply involved in the fight to save the ancient woodland of Hogslea Common from a planned motorway, Ashley corresponds with his carefree brother, who is backpacking round the world. With the gap between the couple widening as steadily as the cracks in their walls, Ashley has to choose between his parents'' values and abandoning a society he finds increasingly precarious and menacing. By the author of the award-winning PIG, this is a sharply observed, often funny and thought-provoking tale of modern life and of the choices we all have to make - as parents, children and members of society. Â

It is December 22nd, a foot of snow has fallen, and Paul is heading out for a small coastal resort on his son Euan''s sixth birthday. Shall I tell you a story? he says and recalls the boy''s birth, his first words and steps, all the stuff of forgetting, of any boy''s life...But nothing, Paul has decided, should ever be lost or discarded or buried, as it was in his own childhood. And so he confides the history of his relationship with Ruth, Euan''s mother; the death of his own mother when he himself was a boy; and his father''s refusal ever to explain what occurred. It soon becomes evident, however, that Euan is not in the car. Evident, too, that Paul is living alone, and that in the cliffs and dunes of the seaside resort lies the key to his story''s conclusion.