Bio Pic


Masterclasses and Workshops

I'm available to teach both masterclasses and extended courses on all aspects of fiction. Some of the masterclasses and workshops which I've given are detailed below. Please contact me if you'd like to discuss any of these, or request a tailored course.


1st June 2019 - Credible and Compelling Writing with CG Menon

This workshop focuses on creating believable characters and settings. Through a series of writing exercises, you’ll learn how real life people and places can be successfully mined for short fiction. We’ll also explore techniques for evoking characters who live beyond the page.

Continue Reading...

July 12th @ 10:30am Writers' Weekend

This one-hour workshop examines what makes a story distinctive, and which publishing markets to aim for. Catherine will consider questions of theme, setting and pacing, as well as how to craft a first paragraph that grabs a reader’s attention.

Continue Reading...

May 30th @ 3pm Northern Short Story Festival

Folklore provides writers with a rich heritage of characters, images, themes and phrases. In this workshop we’ll be learning how to mine folklore to create short stories that resonate beyond the page with your readers.

Continue Reading...

14th May 2019 - Less is More: Writing within Short Story Constraints with CG Menon

This workshop focuses on writing well-rounded short stories that go “beyond the page” in terms of what they convey to a reader. We will discuss how the limited length of a short story imposes its own challenges, and how you can overcome these. We’ll also identify and practise techniques which let a reader infer character backstory and setting, without you needing to explicitly state these.

Continue Reading...