Writing food and place with Nina Mingya Powles

Food writing is a hugely creative and varied genre which is experiencing a resurgence, and both food and place can be powerful ways to situate your story and connect with your reader in creative non-fiction writing. In this workshop, Nina Mingya Powles (author of Small Bodies of Water and Tiny Moons) will help you to make the most of these emotive, evocative aspects of writing, bringing a human touch and expressive detail to your non-fiction.

Through group discussion and short written exercises you will explore:

• How to use free writing exercises as tools for delving into sensory memories
• The ways ‘food writing’ can encompass many forms including poetry, travel writing, journaling, fiction and creative nonfiction
• How we write about distant places, both familiar and unfamiliar
• Techniques for note-taking and writing while on a journey

This workshop will take place online via Zoom. You will need access to the internet via a computer or similar device. Details of how to join the event will be sent a few days before.

Bursary places

One bursary place is available for this workshop. Click here to apply →

About Nina Mingya Powles

Nina Mingya Powles is a writer and zinemaker from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include Small Bodies of Water (Canongate, 2021), Magnolia 木蘭 (Nine Arches Press, 2020) and Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai (The Emma Press, 2020). She holds an MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Victoria University of Wellington. In 2018, Nina was one of three winners of the Women Poets’ Prize, and in 2019 won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing and the Landfall Essay Competition. Nina is the founding editor of Bitter Melon 苦瓜, a very small press that publishes limited-edition pamphlets by Asian poets. She lives in London.