For this workshop we will focus on fabric and the stories they hold. Taking GHT’s exhibition Gardez-L’eau by Enam Gbewonyo as inspiration we will look at the textures and the history of fabrics.

Together we’ll discuss what histories fabrics hold as well as what personal connections you might hold with certain clothes and garments. You’re invited to bring these items with you to let us share their stories.

These workshops are free and open to all levels from those who have never tried creative writing to self published authors and everything in between. This is the second in our new series of creative writing workshops which explore and respond to our visual art programme at God’s House Tower.

About the host

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian-born writer and writing facilitator. She won the Winchester Writers’ Festival Memoir Prize in 2016 and her novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian/Bee Books) was longlisted for the Words to Screen Prize at the Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) festival in India.

She has been shortlisted for, and won, numerous prizes and awards and her work has been commissioned by magazines and for BBC Radio 4. Her most recent collection of short stories, Table Manners, was published by Dahlia Books (2018). It won the Saboteur Short Story Collection Prize in 2019, was finalist for the DLF Hall & Woodhouse Literary Prize and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

She teaches at Winchester University, leads the ACE funded ArtfulScribe Mayflower Young Writers workshops, and was a mentor for the Middle Way Mentoring project. She was writer-in-residence for The Word Factory, London in 2021.

*Please note that these sessions will be taking place at God’s House Tower.