From Our Students Posts

Debut author Rachael Blok shares her tips for editing your novel and how reading other novels will help you with finishing your own.

Author Anne-Marie Howell (the 50th CBC student to get a major book deal) shares her top tips on writing historical fiction for young readers.

Suspense isn’t purely the domain of  horror, thrillers and ghost stories – it’s something every novelist should know how to create, and should deploy at key moments of tension in their story. As All Hallows’ Eve approaches, we thought it would be a good time to share with you some creepy, suspenseful scenes written by budding novelists […]

We are pleased to announce that Mayowa Asaju has been awarded the BAME Writing Scholarship for YA and Children’s Fiction, generously funded by former CBC student Sarah Quinn. Mayowa has joined the 3-month Writing YA and Children’s Fiction course, taught by Catherine Johnson, which started this week. We’ve been delighted by the positive response that we’ve had to the scholarship since […]

Ella Dove studied on our 3-month London-based novel-writing course, back in the Spring of 2015. She was a lively, funny, self-deprecating student – very sociable and always smiling. She was also a very talented writer, though I think she won’t mind my telling you that she hadn’t yet settled into the right novel at that […]

Angela Chadwick was a student on our 6-month online novel-writing course in 2015. Angela’s debut novel XX was one of Sharmaine Lovegroves’ first acquisitions for the new Little, Brown imprint, Dialogue Books, and will be published in hardback and ebook today. XX follows a lesbian couple who take part in the first trial of ovum to ovum fertilisation. Here Angela […]

Christina Pishiris took our 3-month London-based novel-writing course back in 2012, in a cohort that included published authors Lisa Williamson, Maria Realf, James Hall and Fiona Perrin. Christina’s group have been one of our most close-knit and mutually supportive yet – and a full six years later, some of them continue to meet regularly and workshop […]

Julia Armfield was one of the VERY talented bunch of students on our second-ever London-based novel-writing course in 2011 – along with Kate Hamer, James Hannah, Annabelle Thorpe and Tim Glencross, to name just a few (there will be more deals from that group yet, mark my words). Julia was the youngest on the course […]

It’s been quite a year for Struan Murray, who took our London-based novel-writing course way back in 2013. For Struan – as for many of our students, the path to publication has been long and started out bumpy: he finished a novel and gained an agent soon after his CBC course, but not a publisher.

We are thrilled to announce that Liz Xifaras is the winner of the Marian Keyes Novel-Writing Scholarship. Liz has joined the 6-month online novel-writing course, taught by Lisa O’Donnell, which kicked-off this week. We received over 200 applications, the most that we’ve ever had for a scholarship place, and competition was hot! We are immensely grateful to everyone who […]