After years spent working towards that first book, it’s easy to feel like we’re floundering once it finally comes out. For many writers, there can be tension between creating work which continues those initial themes, or which breaks from it entirely. How do we set goals for ourselves and our work? How do we find our next direction?

This online workshop will tease out your writing obsessions, push your work beyond its comfort zone, and help build new focus for the future.

Katie Hale is a Cumbrian novelist and poet. Her collection, White Ghosts, won a Northern Debut Award, and she is the author of two novels: The Edge of Solitude and My Name is Monster. She is a former MacDowell Fellow, and winner of the Palette Poetry Prize, Northern Writers’ Award, and Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, and twice winner of the Munster Fool for Poetry Chapbook Prize. She has held Writer in Residence positions in countries including Australia, the US and Svalbard. Katie also mentors young writers through the Writing Squad, and is currently working on a creative non-fiction project.

This workshop is part of the Push the Boat Out online workshop series.