Creative writing: ‘The idea is to hold the workshop every year’

Various writing styles and the mechanics of narrative construction discussed.

LAHORE:

As many as eight aspiring writers have the opportunity to hone their skills by interacting with award-wining Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka at a workshop organised by the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) that started on July 3. 

The Young Writers’ Workshop is being held for the second consecutive year, says Bilal Tanweer, who teaches fiction writing at LUMS and is mentoring the participants.

Last August, Mohsin Hamid, the author of Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was a guest speaker at the workshop.



“The idea is to hold the writing workshop every year…It aspires to train and instruct young writers in English creative writing,” says Tanweer.

Tanweer said the prospective participants were asked to send in 4,000 words of original fiction.

“We received over 200 entries… the selection was done over a period of two weeks,” he says.

“We have a wider age group at the workshop this time…which is good since it brings greater diversity to discussions,” says Tanweer.

Out of the eight participants, four are from Islamabad, two from Lahore and two from Karachi.

“Split into intense reading and writing sessions, the workshop also involves discussion on various writing styles and the mechanics of narrative construction,” says Tanweer.

“So far the workshop has been an interesting experience, all the while engaging the participants,” he says.



On Friday, the workshop participants had a three-hour session with Shehan Karunatilaka, the author of Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Matthew, which has won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Gratiaen Prize. Karunatilaka spoke about his book and about what went on while he was writing it.

The workshop will go on till Sunday (July 7).

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6^th, 2013.