The Journey begins…
Online fantasy writers course sets off on our adventure
Spring has come to Oxford and our first course is about to start. Five tutors and over twenty students from around the world will be spending the next six weeks together exploring creative writing with a fantasy focus. This is the official beginning of what so many of you have helped create - the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, dedicated to our most famous fantasy writer from the city, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. We will be using Oxford for our inspiration as we know this place has a special fantasy magic. It shaped the works of writers from this city, mostly notably in addition to Professor Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles William, Owen Barfield (the other three of the big four Inklings), as well as William Morris, Lewis Carroll, not to mention more recent ones such as Philip Pullman, Diana Harkness and P.D. James (Children of Men) - even crime writers can turn fantastical when in Oxford! We will be following in their footsteps and seeing where that leads.
Where will we end up?
It is likely the doorways we go through will lead to many strange and wonderful lands. Oxford is not short of inspiring thresholds. Here is one of my favourites.
This is All Souls, probably the strangest of Oxford colleges with arcane practices and a name that would suit many a fantasy novel. This is proof, if you needed it, that the oddest of fantasies are very often to be found in our reality. Margaret Atwood claims she has never had to make up any of her stranger ideas in her speculative fiction as they have always happened somewhere at some time in history. You can easily believe that in my city.
I took this photo last week. Oxford has been strangely quiet during lockdown and the cityscapes even more uncanny than usual.
The first week on the online course, after a brief tour of the city of the Inklings, we will be looking at fairy and folk tales with special guest, Katherine Langrish, author of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: Reflections on Fairy Tales. We’ll be thinking about these tales as the perennial source of magic rings, ogres, wicked stepmothers, fearsome wolves, special swords and impossible tasks. The tasks set the students won’t be impossible (we hope) but should be enough to start those inklings of inspiration coming.
I’ll report back how we get on.
If you like the sound of a virtual course (or from 2022 in-person at Tolkien and Lewis’s old colleges) in Oxford, message us through the contact form and we’ll tell you how you can join in.
