Courses
Guided Writing Week (Date in 2024 to be announced)
space, inspiration, and support
Rushay is an Arts & Crafts country house set in its own gardens and grounds, with nine beautiful bedrooms between the house and cottage. With three further sitting rooms, the house provides plenty of space for quiet work and reflection. It stands a mile from the Dorset coast, on the edge of the Marshwood Vale.
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer, we want to inspire you, and fire your urge to work and create.
A Guided Writing Week with Jason Goodwin and Jeremy Seal
This is a residential course, offering writers five days of private writing, mentoring and conversation.
Arrive on the Sunday evening and settle in. Jeremy and Jason will lead morning sessions to address issues like character, dialogue, plot, pace, setting and research. We’ll be talking about different forms, including fiction, memoir and travel writing.
We want to inspire you to progress with your own fiction or non-fiction. Whether you are a new writer or an established one, we think that you will draw energy from the relatively informal mix of tutoring, guidance and peaceful writing time.
Dining
Supper from the best fresh local ingredients will be served in the dining room at 7.30 for 8 every evening. Breakfast and lunch will be at 8am and 1pm, with snacks, tea and coffee available all day to power you on.
Walks
Weather permitting, we’ll have some (guided) walks in the surrounding countryside: solvitur ambulando is a writing precept, ‘it is solved by walking.’ You might also want to explore the Dorset/Devon borders, or go fossil-hunting on Charmouth’s famous Jurassic beach. Bridport and Lyme Regis are each under fifteen minutes away by car, and Charmouth has two pubs and a café.
Rooms
All the rooms are king size or doubles, except for the attic dorm with four single beds. They are all set up with writing desks and power outlets, with lovely views, and there is fibre broadband and wifi throughout the house, cottage and garden, with good 4G phone reception on all networks.
Getting here
There is ample parking at Rushay, and a taxi from the nearest railway station (Axminster) costs about £15. Axminster is on the Waterloo-Exeter mainline.
Prices (five nights full board):
Master bedroom and green bedroom (king size beds) £950
Double bedrooms £895
Attic singles (up to four sharing) £450
Mentors
Jeremy Seal is the author of acclaimed non-fiction books which combine travel and history, including A Fez of the Heart, Santa: A Life, and Meander, about his solo canoe journey down Turkey’s eponymous river. A Coup in Turkey was published by Chatto in 2021. He has taught creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and ICE Cambridge. He is working on a novel, and often leads people through Turkey via his amazing website.
Jason Goodwin is an award winning writer, whose works of fiction and non-fiction have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Albanian and Korean. He won the coveted Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel but the roots of his writing are in travel and history. He also writes a monthly column for Country Life Magazine.
Jason has taught creative writing at West Dean College, and given masterclasses at the South Bank and The Guardian. There’s more about Jason, his books, and projects, on his website.