Write a Novel :: Creative Industry

Write A Novel
Course Dates: further dates to be announced
Tutors: Jo-Anne Richards & Jann Turner
Cost: R3, 000

Please send an email to register your interest in this course.

This is an intensive four week interactive course, designed to help you turn your great idea for a novel into a reality. Run over four Saturday mornings from 9am - 1pm, it will be led by two highly experienced, internationally published South African novelists. Write a Novel covers all you need to know about getting started, polishing and completing your manuscript and getting it from page to print. Numbers are limited, to ensure individual attention. The course will also include a Meet the Publishers session, where you can hear directly from publishers what they look for in a novel, how to present your manuscript and how they approach and market fiction in South Africa.

Plot & Structure, Suspense, ‘Show, don’t tell’ (Tutor: Jo-Anne Richards)

Characters & Character Development, Dialogue, Viewpoints (Jo-Anne Richards, continued)

Jo-Anne Richards is an internationally published novelist and a journalist of 25 years' experience. She is currently the academic co-ordinator of the Honours course in Journalism and Media Studies at Wits University.
Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, topped the South African bestseller list in the week it appeared and remained there for 15 weeks. It was short-listed for South Africa's premier literary award, The M-Net Book Prize, and was nominated for the Impac International Dublin Literary Award.

Both The Innocence of Roast Chicken and her second novel, Touching the Lighthouse, were published by Headline in the UK and distributed throughout the Commonwealth, including South Africa. Both books were translated into German. Her third book, Sad at the Edges, was published in South Africa and Australia, with a French translation underway. Her fourth novel, to be published by Picador Africa, will appear early in 2008.

Jo-Anne has also published short stories in five collections, including in Laugh the Beloved Country, edited by Harvey Tyson and James Clarke, From Joburg to Jozi, published by Penguin, Something to Write Home About, by Jacana and Twist, published by Oshun. She has run two literary retreats for academics at Wits University and has taught numerous literary courses for members of the public.

Jann Turner was born in France to South African parents. Her father

was Rick Turner, teacher and activist against apartheid who was assassinated in January 1978. Her mother is Barbara Follett, Member of Parliament for Stevenage in the UK. She was raised in the Cape and educated in Britain and the United States.

Jann is the author of the novels Southern Cross and Heartland, both published in South Africa, the UK and Germany and Home Is Where You Find It (Macmillan, South Africa). Heartland was nominated for The MNet Book Prize, 1998. She also published a short story in the collection From Joburg to Jozi (Penguin, 2002).

Jann has written extensively for television, including Zero Tolerance, Mzansi and Hard Copy, for which she won the SAFTA Best Writing Award jointly with Greig Coetzee in 2006. She was also Script Consultant on the film Anner House (RTE Television, 2007). She is an award-winning film maker who spent two years covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for SABC TV's Special Report. Journalism work includes numerous articles for The Guardian (UK) and The Mail & Guardian. Teaching experience includes a seminar on autobiography and memory at Wits University. You can read more about Jann on her website www.jannturner.co.za.