From Our Students Posts

Nikki Smith took not one but three Curtis Brown Creative writing courses back in 2017, starting with two of our 6-week online courses before applying to and then securing a place on our 3-month online novel-writing course. Nikki initially ‘met’ her agent – C& W’s Sophie Lambert – during an online agent feedback session on this longer course and decided to […]

Louise McCreesh was awarded the HW Fisher Scholarship in 2016, giving her a fully-paid place on our 3-month novel-writing course in London. Her novel stood out to the CBC team for its unique narrative voice, which powerfully expressed the mental frailty and anxiety suffered by many of us – and which deployed that voice in […]

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.

It was only this summer that we announced the 50th former CBC student  to gain a major publishing deal. In just a few short months we have received news of a further five exciting deals for our alumni – some of them brokered at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair – a major annual trade fair […]

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 […]