Oxford Writing Mentors

Approaching Writing with Dr Anna Beer

My goal was to create sessions in which you can explore and develop, sometimes playfully, your creative writing practice. Each session offers a blend of practical exercises and insights from my own experience as an author and writing mentor. Each session has a different focus, and can be used in isolation or in sequence depending on your needs, but they are all designed to help you discover, consolidate and indeed celebrate your unique strengths as a writer.

Life-writing is central, but almost all the sessions will be valuable to anyone working on creating a compelling narrative. Along the way, you will not only reflect on your own writing, but also the techniques of a range of leading fiction and non-fiction authors, past and present. You will, of course, be encouraged to bring your insights into their practice into your own work in progress. Implicitly throughout, and explicitly at the end of the final episode, I hope to challenge the self-doubt we all experience, and which often gets in the way of achieving our writing goals. I hope there is something here for everyone, at whatever stage you are in your writing journey.

YOU WILL NEED TO DOWNLOAD THE COURSE NOTES INFORMATION PDF TO ACCOMPANY THE SESSIONS.

Anna Beer
I am the author of a number of biographies, some about people you’ll know (John Milton, Sir Walter Ralegh and William Shakespeare) and others about people you may not know - yet. I’m really proud of my feisty, feminist and accessible accounts of female creatives, including my most influential book, 'Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music' (2016) and, more recently, 'Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature' (2022). My next book, coming out in April 2025, marks a radical new direction for my writing. There will be more information, when I can share it, on my website: Anna Beer | Author (www.annabeerauthor.com)

A long-time Oxford resident, I've held various posts at the University including Director of the Creative Writing MSt, and remain a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College. I now concentrate, however, on working as a writing mentor.

Oxford may be home, but I'm a traveller at heart – whether on night trains, slow boats, on foot or inside a sturdy vehicle complete with roof tent. When I can, I grab my notebooks and laptop and get the words down while discovering new parts of the world.