749 Best Writing Classes in 2026

Eleven-week evening course at City Lit's Keeley Street building in Covent Garden, Thursdays 5.30-7.30pm from 24 September to 3 December, tutor Nicole Acquah. GBP 269 full fee, GBP 175 concession. Covers dialogue, character, story and structure for the stage, and you start work on your own play rather than only analysing others. Note that City Lit also runs this course online with a different tutor - this listing is the in-person section.

Six-week Sunday-daytime course at City Academy in Farringdon, 11am to 1.30pm from 27 September, with Conor Patrick Carroll, GBP 375. It is the follow-on from City Academy's beginners' course and assumes you have already written something: the goal is to produce your first full scene or chapter rather than to sample forms. Daytime scheduling makes it one of the few London options that does not require weekday evenings.

One-day Saturday course at City Academy in Farringdon, 26 September, 10.30am to 4.30pm, taught by children's author Andrew Weale. Currently GBP 130.50 with a 10 per cent early-booking discount, otherwise GBP 145. It is for adults who want to write for children and young adults - you look at how successful children's books work across picture book, chapter book and YA formats, then do practical exercises on your own idea. A second date runs Friday 27 November.

Six-week evening novel course at City Academy in Farringdon, Thursdays 6.45-9.15pm from 12 November, with tutor Jelena Curcic, GBP 425. Covers structure, character and voice with weekly writing and feedback, aimed at people who have an idea and want a working framework for the whole book. The earlier autumn section starting 16 September is discounted to GBP 382.50 if you can begin sooner.

Six-week evening course at City Academy's Farringdon studios, Tuesdays 6.30-9pm from 27 October, taught by Conor Patrick Carroll, GBP 375. It is a workshop format rather than a lecture: you write across several forms, share work with the group and get structured feedback each week, leaving with a folder of finished pieces. City Academy runs this roughly monthly, so if 27 October does not suit, a 30 November start is also open.

Ninety-minute Friday-morning workshop with novelist Ramona Ausubel, $60 ($51 for members), run by The Porch in partnership with the Southern Festival of Books. It is held off-site in the Smart Classroom at the Tennessee State Museum on Rosa L. Parks Blvd rather than at The Porch House. The subject is the stalled project - self-doubt, the manuscript you have started to resent - and practical ways to get moving again.

Four-week in-person evening workshop at The Porch House in Nashville with Cara Lynn Albert, whose debut book Worshipping the Sun is due in 2027, $255 ($217 for members). The class reads widely in monster literature, then has you build an original monster-centred piece - story, poem or essay, your choice of form - which is workshopped in the final session. Homework is required and the workshopping is intensive.

Six-week in-person short fiction workshop at The Porch House in Nashville with Erin Cecilia Thomas, $365 ($311 for members). This is a true workshop rather than a lecture course: you submit your own work in progress for critique and are expected to give considered feedback on everyone else's. Published models under discussion include Joy Williams. Aimed at writers already drafting stories, not at complete beginners.

Four-week in-person memoir course at The Porch House in Nashville led by bestselling memoirist Marianne Richmond, $242 ($206 for members). Richmond teaches a Choose - Shape - Share framework, working through theme, voice, scene, reflection and revision, and treats memoir as an argument rather than a chronology. The final sessions cover publishing pathways, so it suits writers thinking about where a finished manuscript goes.

Single Saturday-morning poetry workshop at The Porch House in Nashville with instructor Melissa Jean, $63 ($54 for members). The session reads Mary Oliver, John Keats and Jane Hirshfield for the techniques poets use to render seasonal detail, then moves into generative exercises built on sense memory. In-class writing load is light and there is no homework - a good fit if you want a poetry session that fits in a single morning.

Four-week in-person evening course at The Porch House in Nashville, taught by novelist Lauren Nossett, author of the thrillers The Resemblance and The Professor. Priced at $255 ($217 for Porch members). The target is volume on the page: you draft roughly ten pages a week so you leave with about thirty pages of a first draft, alongside craft sessions on story catalysts, openings, dialogue and endings. Homework is required and drafts are workshopped intensively, so budget writing time between classes.

Free 90-minute midday freewriting class at the Blue Diamond Library, facilitated by author Marijke McCandless. It is generative rather than critique-based - you write to prompts in the room instead of bringing finished pages, and grammar, punctuation and polish are deliberately set aside so drafts come out fast. Open to absolute beginners and working writers in the same room; no booking and no fee.