Zoe Lea was a student on the same online six-month novel-writing course as Jane Harper back in 2014. Now her debut novel If He Wakes has been published by Canelo. Here she tells us about her journey from CBC student to published author, and the challenges of writing a thriller which also explores female friendship. You were working on […]

It’s our 7th birthday! I know, I know – not as young as we used to be, but I reckon we’ve still got it! Jake Arnott and I opened our boardroom doors to 15 students for the very first CBC novel-writing course back in May 2011 – and it all went so swimmingly that in September I […]

We’re utterly thrilled that the fabulous Marian Keyes  is personally funding one place on our Six-Month Online Novel-Writing Course this Autumn, for a talented writer who needs financial assistance in order to be able to join the course. The Marian Keyes Scholarship is now open for applications, so do take a look. In the meantime, we chatted to Marian – one […]

Who’s laughing? … Apparently not the 2018 judges of The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction, as they have announced that the prize will not be awarded this year. We asked Curtis Brown literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes for her views on what this means for the comic novel – and which books are making her laugh this […]

Lisa O’Donnell is one of the tight-knit team of tutors on our online creative writing courses, as well as being a Commonwealth-Book-Prize-winning author in her own right. She’s helped many of our students develop their stories – including Jane Harper, whose debut The Dry has, this week, been named Crime Novel of the Year at the British […]

We are completely thrilled to announce that the globally-bestselling and greatly-loved author Marian Keyes is personally sponsoring a fully-funded scholarship place for one talented writer with limited financial means to take up a place (worth £2600) on the next Curtis Brown Creative six-month online novel-writing course, starting in September. The scholar will join 14 other aspiring […]

The laws around email communication and data protection are changing on 25th May to give you more control over your personal data. We’ve updated our privacy policy and are asking our newsletter subscribers to re-opt in. If you’re already a subscriber, don’t forget to re-opt in on the email you will have received from us on May 9th. […]

Fiona Perrin is the forty-third CBC student with a book deal, and the fourth student from a particular 2012 London course cohort to sell her book, joining Lisa Williamson, Maria Realf and James Hall. Lots of this group are still meeting up regularly, and supporting each others’ work. It’s fantastic to see this paying off so well […]

James Hall took our London based novel-writing course in 2012, and his debut novel, The Industry of Human Happiness (Lightning Books), is set in the murky backstage world of late-Victorian theatreland. It lovingly depicts the early years of recorded music in turn-of-the-century London. James offers us some insights on how he approached the research for his book, a key question for anyone writing […]

We’re delighted to announce that the latest HW Fisher scholarship, enabling one talented writer of limited financial means to study on one of our London-based creative writing courses for free, has been awarded to Kiare Ladner for her novel-in-progress Nightshift. Nightshift is a story of obsession set in London’s liminal world of nightshift workers. It’s concerned with what happens when the […]