Saturday 13 June 2026, 12.30pm – 2.30pm
Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ

Ignite your creative imagination. Join us for a practical writing workshop using the J.A. Baker Special Collection as a catalyst led by Dr Andrew Burton, Lecturer in Drama and Creative Writing at the University of Essex. Everyone welcome – no experience necessary.

This event is kindly funded by The Bean Trust.

Tickets: £20 / £15 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: eventbrite.co.uk

This event is part of The Writers Room

Essex Book Festival and the University of Essex are hosting an exciting 1-day programme of writers’ and writing events. Events include author talks and workshops, multi-genre panel discussions, and The Pitch (a 10-minute speed-date with an industry professional). Plus, an opportunity to engage with and explore the J.A. Baker Archive.

Photo credit (circle of books): Jaredd Craig, unsplash.com

Photo credit (writing in a notebook): Marcos Paulo-Prad, unsplash.com

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Saturday 06 June 2026, 10.30am – 12.00pm
Colchester Samaritans, Walsingham Road Community Hall, 34 Walsingham Road, Colchester, CO2 7BN

Drawing on his new collection, Father Myself, James McDermott will lead a special writing workshop to help you to re-see bereavement, grief and emotional loss. This inclusive and interactive workshop is designed for writers of all abilities – all welcome.

Tickets: £20 / £15 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: Eventbrite.co.uk

Part of our Love & Loss day of events at Colchester Samaritans

Father Myself, James McDermott

In 2022, James McDermott lost his sixty-year-old father to COVID after three weeks in intensive care. In Father Myself, his second collection from Nine Arches Press, McDermott explores his father’s complex illness and death; grief; growth and how as a queer boy then a bereaved son, he had to learn to father himself.

In clear-sighted and often hard-hitting poems, McDermott takes the reader onto the frontline of the pandemic – documenting the experience and trauma of a COVID-bereaved family with an unflinching eye. Both powerful and compassionate, these extraordinary poems have the capacity to go beyond simply a record of events, reaching sensitively for the human details that matter – the beat of a heart and movement of breath, the touch of a hand, the words we use for goodbye.

Praise for Father Myself:

‘Father Myself is a bright devastation of a book, a meditation on father-son love, queerness, loss, imperfection, and a man slowly becoming his own father. Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered.’
– Joelle Taylor

‘This is emotional, gut-punching stuff. McDermott’s best work to date.’
– Luke Wright

Buy a copy of the book from bookshop.org.

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Throughout June, Metal Southend will become a home for Essex writers to share, forge ideas, make connections, gossip, read and write.

Packed with an inspiring lineup of events including wild swimming, wild hot desks, estuary mud walks, writing walks, film screenings, open advice sessions and collaborative co-writing spaces.

Come write, connect, and get muddy with us.

Writers’ Hot Desks – Atmospheric attic room desks with spectacular views across the estuary to Kent never cease to provide inspiration for writers needing space to shape their ideas. Book a desk to carve out time for yourself away from the distractions of everyday life.

Wild Writing Desk – A special writer’s desk will be outdoors in a secluded area of Chalkwell Park. This is the perfect environment for those who love to write immersed in nature. Southend weather permitting.

Co-Working & Shared Spaces, Open Advice Sessions, Meet Our Resident Writers, Plus special events just announced:

How to Approach an Island: Walking the Broomway with Helen Galliano of Arbonauts - 8 June
Write Around The Island: A Day of Estuary Exploration – 16 June
Find Your Writing Community with National Centre for Writing – 18 June
Wild Write + Swim: Sense the Estuary with Angenita Teekens – in partnership with the Federation of Essex Women’s Institutes  – 21 June
Creative/Critical Writing- Live Art Writers Network with performingborders  – 25 June

Plus more!

Visit metalculture.com/projects/essex-writers-house-2025 for more details and to book on to events.

The post Essex Writers House 2025 – Full Programme Announced appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Saturday 27 June 2026, 10.30am – 12.30pm
Harlow Museum & Walled Gardens, Muskham Road, Harlow, CM20 2LF

Join best-selling author Syd Moore for a special writing workshop using objects from the archives of Harlow Museum to inspire your work.

Explore the archive at Harlow Museum – the collection holds a huge variety of paper-based documents, including original town plans, photos, parish registers, newspapers, and books. All these items contain rare and invaluable information about Harlow from the time of the individual parishes, through the new town era, up to the present day. The various items included within the archives provide a unique insight into the people who lived in the town and their way of life over multiple decades.

During this writing workshop best-selling author, Syd Moore, will guide you through using items from the Harlow Museum collection to inspire you to write your own piece of creative work.

This workshop is for writers of all abilities – all welcome.

Tickets: £20 / £15 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: eventbrite.co.uk

Part of our Harlow weekend – Essex Book Festival is delighted to be heading to Harlow for a weekend of writing workshops, author and artist talks, family games, and poetry. Find out more at essexbookfestival.org.uk/harlow-weekend/.

Syd Moore

Photo of Syd Moore © JMoore photos

Syd Moore has been a Royal Literary Fund fellow and is currently working with them to pioneer ‘Reading Round’ courses in hospices. Her novel The Witching Hour was a Top Twenty bestselling horror title of 2024. She was the first Author in Residence for Essex Libraries and is best known for her Essex Witch Museum Mysteries, which was shortlisted for the
Good Reader Holmes and Watson Award in 2018 and 2019. She has been shortlisted twice for a CWA dagger for her short stories. Syd founded the Essex Girls’ Liberation Front and successfully removed the term ‘Essex girl’ from the Oxford dictionary in 2020. She lives in Essex.

Syd Moore will also be taking part in an author event later in the day in the Walled Gardens at Harlow Museum, talking about her latest novel, The Great Deception – the second in her thrilling new series about Britain’s secret wartime history.

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