I can tailor writing workshops to any group regardless of age, background, skill and experience. I have worked as a facilitator for Writing Yorkshire, Ignite Imaginations, St Luke’s hospice and the WEA. I’ve run workshops for schools, youth groups, community centres, drug rehabs, homeless hostels and refugee projects as well as running a range of private workshops for adults and children.
Weekly writing workshops
Are you always saying that this year will be the year that you'll write that novel?
Or that this year, you're going to make time for your own projects?
Friendly, supportive writing workshops for writers at all stages of their writing journeys. Think of it as push-ups for your writing muscles, a play date for your inner child, a chance to exorcise your demons or just plain magic. It’s best experienced first-hand, but is also available as an online course.
You’ll be guided through a series of themed writing exercises to generate new writing in the company of other writers. You can write in whatever genre and for whatever purpose suits you. Expect fun, laughter, friendship and solidarity as side effects.
I have two weekly workshops:
Get Writing - in-person on Wednesdays at The Writers Workshop
Writing Lunchbreak - online on Monday lunchtime
For group coaching, see Monday Motivation
Childrens Writers Meet-up
A chance to get together with other writers and share the adventure of writing for young audiences.
Children's Writing Clubs
Writing Clubs are a chance for children and young people to play with writing outside of the constraints of the formal curriculum. It is writing for writing’s sake. Like drama clubs or art clubs, Writing Clubs are a place where young people can express themselves, experiment, develop their love of stories and language, and grow in confidence. Writing is a creative act and not just a tool for passing exams. In Writing Club we don’t focus on grammar, spelling or punctuation but writing skills will develop naturally as children fall in love with the power of the written word. Currently I just have one Writing Club on a Wednesday from 4.30pm-6pm at The Writers Workshop.
‘My 10-year-old has been attending Beverley's writing club for a couple of years now. She looks forward to it and always has writing to show me afterwards. But what I'm happiest to see is how it has helped her to see herself as a writer and to be creative and confident with her thoughts and ideas. She writes all the time, anywhere, about anything and is happy to share her writing with anyone who will listen. I really think that being part of Beverly's writing club, sharing her work there and hearing other kids read their work, has given her this creative freedom and shown her much fun writing can be.’ Steph
Retreats
There’s nothing I enjoy more than facilitating writing retreats for other writers.
I run writing weekends at my own property which is just a stone’s throw from the sandy beach at Bridlington.
The weekends include workshops, quiet writing time and wonderful vegetarian and vegan catering.
Retreats are discounted for members of The Writers Workshop
"My first writing retreat and why I left it so long I will never know. Fun, friendly, thought provoking and focusing. Everything I wanted."
~ Stephen Mellor
A Brief History
Like most writers, my writing journey began as a small child and has been long and convoluted. My love of scribbling began at a young age but by the time I was a teenager, I’d been diverted into academic pursuits and scrutiny of text. It was only when I became an English teacher (in my early twenties) that I remembered my love of writing and realised that my only aspiration as a teacher was to kindle this love in my students. Realising that school wasn’t the right place for me, I spent the next decade working with disadvantaged groups as a youth and community worker, always with a focus on inspiring client groups to find their voices and express their truth through words.
In the late 1990s I enrolled on a WEA Creative Writing course and quickly moved onto the MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University as a poet, where I received a distinction for my burgeoning novel. Like many writers, I decided to give up my day job to pursue fame and fortune but, even though the first agent I sent my novel to proclaimed that it “could be a bestseller making hundreds of thousands of pounds”, twenty years later, I was still chasing the elusive book deal and had long-since gone back to work!
Photo credit Simon Veit Wilson
Since then, I have continued on my journey towards finding my own voice, whilst also working to inspire and support other writers along the way. In 2013, I won a Northern Writers Award for my young adult novel, Straight on till Morning (based on my experience of working with homeless young people and heroin users) and in 2015, I was commissioned by the Donor Conception Network to write the book that became Archie Nolan: Family Detective. Three weeks after the book launch, my mother died of cancer and twelve weeks after this, my new partner, Blacksmith Paul died suddenly and traumatically.
As a natural reaction, I turned to writing to support myself through the years that followed, posting my poems and reflections on grief on a blog which became Swimming through Clouds. Through writing the blog, I helped myself to come to terms with loss and found myself, inadvertently, helping other people who had experienced bereavements. The blog has been read 150,000 times and has lead to me writing on grief for The Huffington Post. The book of the blog, Dear Blacksmith was released by Valley Press in February 2020.
In the meantime, I have always worked with literature, both in Sheffield and beyond, often using my own experiences as the catalyst for new projects and initiatives to help other writers. In 2004, I founded the Sheffield Young Writers, a pioneering young writers’ project and later, worked with Signposts South Yorkshire to lay the foundations for further young writers’ provision. In addition, I worked for several years as a project manager for Signposts / Writing Yorkshire and as a consultant for The Reading Agency, Booktrust, The National Literacy Trust and Arts Council England, helping to shape policy for young writers and readers.
Later, I co-founded the Sheffield Novelists and established Bank Street Writers (now Blank Street Writers) to provide a home for emerging writers who had graduated from young writers’ projects. I was also instrumental in initiating the Sheffield Novel Slam, an event which arose out of my jealousy towards aspiring poets who seemed to have more limelight!
Since 2014, I have been facilitating my much-loved writing Get Writing workshops and running Children’s Writing Clubs on a freelance basis whilst supporting other writers as a coach and mentor. As a self-employed, single parent and writer, I am very familiar with the struggles of writers and creatives and the isolation that comes from working alone, from home, on projects which require nurture and support.
In 2020 I began establishing The Writers Workshop, a hub for writing, in Orchard Square, Sheffield.
