Highly Irregular Newsletter No. 1
Dear lovely newsletter subscriber,
Happy new year, and thank you for allowing me to slide into your Inbox! In this, my first Highly Irregular newsletter, I thought I’d let you know what “highly irregular” might mean. What it might mean is that this newsletter won’t be coming out on a regular basis, there will be no once-a-month-ness here. Instead of feeling pressured to have something to announce to you all on a particular date, I thought I’d wait until I have something I am really excited about, and then pop you a quick email.
The content of each newsletter may also be pretty irregular. For example, in this one you will find below something called Permission Corner, where I share a fairly odd writing-related thing that I, or another writer I’ve been reading about, does with their writing, in order to pass on permission to you to either try this for yourself – or just carry on doing whatever the fairly odd writing-related thing is that you already do, in the knowledge that we all do it our own way! Please let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to chat about here. Or any other irregular features you might sporadically like me to include. I believe you can reply through TinyLetter, so let's make this a conversation - what I really want is to be as useful to you as I can.
And of course I will be letting you all know before anyone else about one-off writing workshops and longer courses I am running, online and in person, as well as any readings or other events I am doing. I am currently writer-in-residence for the excellent Arvon foundation here in the UK (https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/tania-hershman-writer-in-residence/) and have programmed several events you might be interested in, see below. If you’d like to invite me to do one or more of these things for your writing group/festival/bookshop or any other delightful organisation, please do email me at TaniaH@gmail.com and we can chat!
In this age where we are bombarded with emails from all sides, as a HUGE thanks for signing up to receive another one (every now and again), I’ve set up a secret page on my website where you can buy some of my books direct from me (while stocks last) at a very special TinyLetter discount: http://www.taniahershman.com/wp/tinyletter-subscribers-page/
Upcoming Stuff
January
Mon 16 - Fri 20 January There’s still time to sign up for the FREE 5 Day Hybrid Writing Challenge I am running for Arvon, whereby you will receive a (quite weird) daily prompt every day for five days to guide you through the writing of a hybrid piece. What is hybrid writing? Sign up – and all will be explained in the introduction email you’ll receive on Sunday! https://www.arvon.org/hybrid-writing-challenge/
Tues 17 January 7pm-9pm UK time: I am running an online writing masterclass for Arvon taking inspiration from known and unknown women throughout history. Not only will you leave with FOUR new stories/poems/flash fictions/ hybrids/other, you'll be helping to fund two places for low income writers on the hybrid writing course I'm teaching with Holly Corfield Carr in March. Masterclass open to all – no writing experience necessary. https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/masterclass-exploring-untold-stories/
February
Tues 28 February 7pm-9pm UK time Ever wanted to peek behind the scenes of literary magazines and find out what they’re looking for, how to submit, and more? I’ll be hosting Arvon’s first online Lit Mag Salon: come and hear from the editors of Present Tense, Ache and Banshee lit mags, who will talk about running a magazine, what kinds of writing they love and how much they'd like to read yours! https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/lit-mag-salon-with-tania-hershman/
Stay Tuned...
... for an in-person short story course in Manchester, an online reading by me from both my new books, the poetry collection and the hybrid novel, another Wonky Animals Collective poetry event, and online flash & hybrid writing courses later in the year. You'll hear it all here first!
Permission Corner
I posted this on Twitter last week and the resulting thread was as wonderful as I’d hoped! Lots of people seem to find it helpful for whatever they’re writing – from novels and stories to poetry collections - to get colourful and visualise what might be going on, whether with crayons, coloured pencils, post-it notes etc… As someone in the thread said, we often forget “to play”. I take play very seriously. Do you remember to play in your writing? If you need permission to play, I hereby give it to you, whatever that means to you!
Have a lovely month or so!
Tania x